tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-134036812024-03-06T22:22:38.601-08:00no condition is permanentcount reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-30206164786097083122013-11-19T18:07:00.003-08:002013-11-19T18:08:47.474-08:00"I was here, but I disappear..."<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is the final post at the Blogspot iteration of <i>No Condition Is Permanent</i>. As my week now encompasses <a href="http://www.luxuriamusic.com/no-condition-is-permanent-with-count-reeshard">a radio show</a>, with its attendant hype, podcasts, playlists and potentially irksome graphics, I felt <a href="http://noconditionispermanent.wordpress.com/">a new version of <i>NCIP</i>-as-blog</a> was required to reflect the newly hatched preoccupation.<br />
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To describe my entries over the last few years as sporadic is putting a polite spin on it. I don't even know how lengthy the latest gap between posts had been. Comets reappear in a more dependable fashion. This summer, trying to revive the blog (again) with the two latest album uploads, I couldn't help but notice how devolved Blogger's authoring tools have become in recent times. So I've migrated to Wordpress, which is where you may now find <a href="http://noconditionispermanent.wordpress.com/">No Condition Is Permanent</a>.<br />
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I'll continue to exhume and dust off vinyl for your downloading enjoyment and will port over several of the albums previously featured here. As mentioned, the playlists, archived episodes and sundry errata relating to my web-radio show also will be posted.<br />
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As I'm stepping off of one virtual stage and onto <a href="http://noconditionispermanent.wordpress.com/">another</a>, I'll take a moment to apologize to any readers frustrated by my aperiodic entries. Ordinarily I wouldn't see that changing, but with the show I now have a weekly Saturday evening obligation. This differs from a weekly paper route only in that the kids with the canvas shoulder bags make more money than I will. Which may instill something like regimented behavior. I anticipate a greater engagement with the blog than in years past...maybe.<br />
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Please visit the new site and check out the radio show while you're at it. These things, past and present, are all of a piece. I'm reminded of the irked audience member, heard between tracks on Neil Young & Crazy Horse's live set, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_the_Horse">Year Of The Horse</a></i>. The punter yells, "They all sound the same." Quick on the uptake for an inveterate stoner, Mr. Young responds, "It's all one song."<br />
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Be seeing you,<br />
Count Reeshard<br />
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<br />count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-55153954887691688582013-10-31T11:01:00.001-07:002013-11-01T10:57:39.059-07:00Various Artists, I Was A Teenage Brain Surgeon<div style="text-align: center;">
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Just in time for my favorite holiday, here's a compilation of monster-themed rockabilly, early rock'n'roll and otherwise knucklehead-ed novelty tunes. This album is a ghost in its own right, as it first appeared in the late '80s. At the time - and I believe that the late Tower Records led the charge in this regard - vinyl had been declared dead. All conventional retail sources for recorded music had switched exclusively to aluminum product.<br />
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Then, small renegade enterprises devoted to selling a new crop of 33 1/3 releases began to surface in bad neighborhoods. I frequented Finyl Vinyl, on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan's as-yet-to-be-gentrified East Village. There, one was introduced to multiple volumes of: the <a href="http://img.cdandlp.com/2012/07/imgL/115433860.jpg"><i>Savage Kick/Black Rock'n'Roll</i></a> series; the <a href="http://www.wirz.de/music/stompin/grafik/lp024.jpg"><i>Stompin'</i></a> lp's (nearly 30 - ! - volumes whose sleeves were adorned inexplicably with beautiful photos of black jazz players, despite their containing roadhouse R&B tunes); <a href="http://img.cdandlp.com/2012/07/imgL/115489027.jpg"><i>Sin Alley</i></a>; <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsUH1t7rPRb-FJLVVc88T3JOS8SdENN286RexG3B-M4P4YXthky_c_e-bbETIdhWXz-X_A65rFs2IoG_Ln7HhnkliZ_aNeh1dfxnI0kiu-T_l30uUrpY0bAAHJvuTL9wUIpUalKA/s1600/front+cover.jpg"><i>Desperate Rock'n'Roll</i></a>; <a href="http://jamestaylor2000.com/DangerousDooWop/Dangerous%20Doo-Wop%204%20-%2018.JPG"><i>Dangerous Doo Wop</i></a>; <a href="http://www.groovytunesday.com/dbx/frolicthree.jpg"><i>Frolic Diner</i></a> and <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbSGe5_7I5c9PQ04UxoupshAGU9gm-f-kXO5uSNWPKQsY8jcamORYZjXketYxKzL49RfIUVCLiQiV03mkJXegqTKFToB1vQ4wgPVtAXzQ9CewKOPb4JcSa4x2tLokS-bbwx15-/s1600/SurfersMood1_a.jpg"><i>Surfer's Mood</i></a>, among others. Additionally, and generated by the same obsessive collectors of greasy, unmannered music, there were one-off collections curated around specific themes: <i><a href="http://mobile.collectorsfrenzy.com/gallery/200670117405.jpg">Fat! Fat! Fat!</a> </i>(rock'n'roll and rhythm and blues from the '50s and early '60s depicting fat gals and massive guys); <a href="http://img.cdandlp.com/2013/08/imgL/116151336.jpg"><i>Concussion!!! 18 Gougin' Instrumentals 1958-1965</i></a>; <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXe95EvupSZP8KJI_k-H0mJGDB9c8I_dC6WL7j9aUYQ0_F8gxsqj7mLsVSbJ79VBeJQEAIMmIRv-WcC33neGk1gEni1ZTVXqGU7LoQJq3L5OEt2EVBXKGxaaV3pXiZqpCpqBcYHA/s1600/hodadhootenanny.jpg"><i>Ho-Dad Hootenanny!</i></a>; <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR-qx39MImlKVP20mNaj9pr6v_dI2JZasloRVGGqswVPebN1tKYD5btQar831nlc-2NSHKoaqECQnIVYo1gxf15ZNZor9Z_pEiUDuKne1woZMG1qa1I2cfYMip-mdA6LL5g_pCXw/s1600/Swing_Crime_vorne.jpg"><i>Swing For A Crime</i></a> (slightly jazzier fare, with drop-in dialog lifted from director Stanley Kubrick's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAe1CJWH_B8"><i>The Killing</i></a> providing between-song segueways) and <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/1721767707/">today's offering</a>, this last being an appropriate soundtrack for Halloween, should you be the type who will answer the door wearing rockabilly drag that appears to be a costume... but, in fact, is your daily wear.</div>
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In the day I wrote an article for Michael Weldon's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotronic_Video"><i>Psychotronic Video</i></a> magazine about this phenomenon. Needless to add, music begins where language leaves off and no amount of my own wordbending could do justice to the visceral delight afforded by collections such as <a href="http://www.discogs.com/Various-I-Was-A-Teenage-Brain-Surgeon/release/3517886"><i>I Was A Teenage Brain Surgeon</i></a>. So, pull it down, load it into your player, dim the lights and get ready for those teenagers with paper bags over their heads who show up slightly too late in the evening. Advice: Hand individual cigarettes to those stragglers with attitude...and keep the stereo cranked. <br />
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<a href="http://www34.zippyshare.com/v/28252264/file.html">I WAS A TEENAGE BRAIN SURGEON @ 192</a><br />
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P.S. <a href="http://www.luxuriamusic.com/no-condition-is-permanent-with-count-reeshard">No Condition Is Permanent</a> is now a <b>weekly radio show</b>, streaming live from <a href="http://luxuriamusic.com/">luxuriamusic.com</a> <b>each and every Saturday from 9pm to 11pm PST</b>. (viz. the graphic in the left margin, placed at random thanks to Blogger's latter day devolution as a blog writing tool.) My show, as with the balance of <a href="http://www.luxuriamusic.com/schedule">Luxuria's program roster</a>, may also be heard via the <a href="http://tunein.com/">TuneIn app</a> for smartphones. Archives of the show will appear on the following day at the Luxuria site - just click <a href="http://www.luxuriamusic.com/podcasts">the Podcast tab</a>. Also, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NoConditionIsPermanentLuxuria">the inevitable Facebook group</a>. Those familiar with the contents of this journal will find companionable sounds seasoned with the usual jaundiced take on life. <br />
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count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-49092113539056261502013-10-05T15:14:00.002-07:002013-10-09T14:02:23.764-07:00The Pasadena Roof Orchestra<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It is a curious thing that one of this writer's fondest mementos of the early seventies, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/interactive/2013/feb/06/glam-style-interactive-timeline">a time</a> when a forward-thinking young man's <a href="http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GFfC9pKTjR0/Tv425xt63yI/AAAAAAAAAg8/Klm5upoOkr0/s1600/granny1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://dandyinaspic.blogspot.com/2011/12/come-in-2011-your-time-is-up.html&h=1438&w=953&sz=301&tbnid=TZlKuQCE8pD0NM:&tbnh=103&tbnw=68&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dgranny%2Btakes%2Ba%2Btrip%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=granny+takes+a+trip&usg=__f6FFx4ZCyCgj2npNmp5TEJ7Bn3w=&docid=yrYwwuiEQnZRhM&sa=X&ei=XJFQUvPaH8m8iwLBhoCgCA&ved=0CE0Q9QEwBg">fashion sense</a> might encompass eyeshadow and satin trousers and snakeskin stack-heeled shoes, is this collection of dance band tunes predating the Great Depression, recreated by then-contemporary musicians bedecked in vintage formal wear. Point of fact it is worth puzzling over, how a document of such pure-hearted intention and sincerity should have emerged from a period noteworthy for <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/24/arts/24iht-germart.3653712.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">behavior resembling that of the Weimar Republic's demimonde</a>. </div>
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<a href="http://www.pasadena.co.uk/">The Pasadena Roof Orchestra</a> was signed to <a href="http://www.discogs.com/label/Transatlantic%20Records">Transatlantic</a> in the U.K., the label that released the band's initial forays in what would grow over time to become a voluminous catalog. But it was Chris Blackwell's Island imprint that proved adventurous enough to release the band's premier effort via Warner Brothers in the U.S. circa 1974. This would prove to be their only American release. (Today's lp was reissued briefly on CD a decade ago by a Japanese label, with copies of the disc now fetching outlandish prices online, invariably underscored by 'Not Currently Available' advisories.)</div>
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As to the band's relevance in <a href="http://www2.gibson.com/News-Lifestyle/Features/en-us/glam-history-0201-2011.aspx">that curious era</a>, after the hippie years and before dreadful boogie bands achieved hegemony in the American market – to the latter, praise Jah for the eventual appearance of punk, a movement rooted in this time – it is worth noting that the PSO played at the launch of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biba">Biba's</a>, the Art Deco-styled department store that aimed to supply the <i>legal</i> needs of the decadent set. (The band's cover portrait was shot in Biba's Rainbow Room.) The PSO played atop Biba's roof, commemorating the release of their debut album. This event represented an early high water mark in customer friendliness for the store. I suspect Biba's unofficial motto ran something along the lines of "Where the counter girls are otherwise occupied and the customer is...who did you say you were again?" I once waited in vain for a <a href="http://blog.vintagevixen.com/2011/09/barbara-biba-and-beyond.html">pair</a> of said employees to acknowledge my presence as they perfected the edges of their black lipstick, prior to my giving up and moving along. Those were <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=mandrax">different</a> times.</div>
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By way of defining the Pasadena Roof Orchestra's sound, I can do no better than to reproduce the sleeve notes. The UK historian, surrealist and saloon singer <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1556510/George-Melly.html">George Melly</a> was tapped to author the liners, a stroke of singular appropriateness. Mr. Melly, during his lifetime a member in longstanding of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Arts_Club">Chelsea Arts Club</a>, author of the essential pop history volume <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Revolt-into-Style-The-Arts/dp/0571246583"><i>Revolt Into Style</i></a> (a quote from which - at the bottom of this page - has footnoted every <i>NCIP</i> entry) and a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1323181/George-Mellys-enraged-wife-brands-claim-invited-woman-sheets-deathbed-shamless-lies.html">mischief-maker</a> of unparalleled ingenuity, described exactly why the moment was nigh for the PRO to materialize:</div>
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<i>In the swinging sixties 'yesterday' was a very dirty word and people became invisible on their thirtieth birthday. In that heady immediate decade they made it new each day and it didn't matter too much if you were a genius (which some were) or a hyped-up imposter because each week, each month, what you played or sang or designed was swept up and thrown into fashion's waste-disposal unit, and sometimes you with it. In the swinging sixties to be young was meant to be very heaven and sometimes was, and there was lots of bread for making revolutionary noises and no-one found it incongruous if afterwards you were driven off in your big limo to your hotel suite which you could mess up as much as you liked with your cheque book at the ready. The discos and boutiques opened and closed like flowers and there were pretty toys in all the shops and nobody who was anybody got up before 3pm. In the swinging sixties...</i></div>
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<i>In the seventies though, as the newspapers and television promise escalating disaster and a tin of dog food costs last week what would have bought a tin of best stewing steak, the boutiques and discos wilt and die, like-minded young and old cling to each other, and the past no longer seems such a drag, more a haven of confident innocence. Things were bad then, too, but people managed, had a good time, survived on optimism, on a charming and naive silliness, danced away their cares, crawled out of the bleak streets of the depression into the warm picture palaces where dreams of better times flickered across the screens, rolled back the rugs in their lounges and danced to the wireless or the wind-up gramophone. In the seventies 'yesterday' has become a beautiful word because we are able to say it, and that means a chance of believing in tomorrow. In the seventies...</i></div>
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<i>This LP by the Pasadena Roof Orchestra would have been unthinkable in the sixties. Thirteen gentlemen dressed in tailsuits and wing collars playing, note for note, the band parts of arrangements of the dance music of the twenties and thirties, not mockingly, in no way aiming at high camp, but with loving musicianly respect. Is it healthy, this yearning for old certainties? If it isn't, it's the times which are out of joint, the music which, temporarily at any rate, sets young feet tapping and lips smiling. Nostalgia? For my generation certainly, but the young can scarcely feel nostalgic about what they never knew. How can the music of Jack Hylton, Whiteman, the Savoy Orpheans, mean anything to them? But it does. 'Teach us,' they cry to their sclerotic mums and dads, 'how to Charleston.'</i></div>
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<i>The Pasadena Roof Orchestra was formed in advance of its time in 1969 by Mr. John Arthy. Most of its members had been involved in traditional jazz, a mode then entirely banished to the outer darkness. All had to be able to read and to possess a frock coat. A library of material was acquired and mastered. Playing at first for peanuts in pubs, the band soon acquired a reputation and now, at exactly the right moment, their first LP is ready to help lighten the gloom of the most unpromising Christmas since 1931.</i></div>
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<i>GEORGE MELLY</i></div>
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<i>October 1974</i></div>
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<a href="http://www37.zippyshare.com/v/34513731/file.html" target="_blank">THE PASADENA ROOF ORCHESTRA @ 320</a><i><br /></i></div>
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count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-2347376434248415202013-08-22T22:01:00.001-07:002013-08-25T12:46:29.552-07:00Remmy Ongala & Orchestre Super Matimila, Nalilia Mwana<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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[Editor's note: <i>No Condition is Permanent</i> is now a radio show, available for download from <a href="http://www.luxuriamusic.com/">Luxuria Music</a>. Visit the site, create a user name and password for yourself, then look for the DeLUX page containing the <i>N.C.I.P.</i> shows. It's just that easy. And, look! There are 5 one-hour installments online at present. I'll also be dj'ing live for 2 hours via the Luxuria web stream on August 31st, beginning at 7pm PST. Additionally, <i>No Condition Is Permanent</i> may be liked on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NoConditionIsPermanentLuxuria">Facebook</a>, if you're so inclined. Will wonders never cease...]</div>
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Today's album dates from the '80s when <a href="http://www.womad.org/">WOMAD</a>, a.k.a. World Of Music Arts And Dance, was coming into its own as a force for good in the cultural discourse of those years. Having established its identity as a multi-culti music festival, WOMAD began issuing albums. The earliest of these documented the festival itself (cf. <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-best-of-music-rhythm-mw0000192486"><i>Music & Rhythm</i></a>). Later releases were <a href="http://www.discogs.com/Various-WOMAD-Talking-Book-Volume-Four-An-Introduction-To-Asia-1/release/2280038">continent-spanning anthologies</a> with copious notes, maps and photographs spread across large format booklets tucked within the gatefold sleeves so beloved of vinyl enthusiasts. </div>
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Finally, the label issued albums devoted to <a href="http://www.discogs.com/label/WOMAD+Records">individual artists</a> who had performed at WOMAD.<i> Nalilia Mwana</i> was one such lp, first appearing in 1988. It is my favorite among the label's single artist releases. Here's some biographical data about <a href="http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/view/assets/images/artists/Remmy%20Ongala%20.jpg?w=653&h=288&scale=fit&smileaction=image">Remmy Ongala</a>, from the sleeve notes:</div>
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<i>Known as the 'Doctor,' Remmy Ongala is based in Dar Es Salaam with his band Orchestre Super Matimila. In Tanzania Remmy's popularity amongst the people, particularly the young, is unrivalled – only the president is better known. His reputation as a singer, writer and performer precedes him even in the remotest parts of the Tanzanian bush. originally from Kindu in north-eastern Zaïre, Remmy performed in bands from the age of sixteen, following in the steps of his father, a popular local musician. His rich voice is backed by fluid East African guitar melodies. the influence of Zaïrean </i><i>soukous is ever-present in the steady drive of the music, but hints of Latin, Caribbean and even soul give the music a broad, open and unique quality.</i></div>
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<i>It is difficult to obtain recorded music from East Africa. Making a record can be thwarted with problems – there are virtually no recording studios. this LP ws recorded on the simplest two-track facilities which accounts for the inferior quality. It is even difficult to obtain musical instruments and when Orchestra Matimila were formed in the mid '70s they took their name from the local businessman who bought the instruments.</i></div>
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The album's sound quality<i> </i>isn't bad at all, really, though the bass player could shine more brightly. His performance on "Arusi Ya Mwanza," which pairs stunning economy with a consummately erotic vibe, is the motor driving the track. The same recording of this song turned up on the Earthworks compilation <i>Legends Of East Africa</i> bearing the alternate title "Mume Wangu," credited to Orchestra Makassy. The latter group comprised Ugandan and Zaïrean musicians, one of these being Remmy Ongala, the nephew of the band's founder. Makassy was based out of Dar Es Salaam for a while, which precipitated Remmy's move to Tanzania. He remained there in the wake of Orchestra Makassy's subsequent migration to Kenya. The provenance of "Arusi Ya Mwanza" is all a bit mysterious and life may indeed be too short for splitting hairs about such matters. Suffice to say, the WOMAD version of the song sounds of a piece with the balance of <i>Nalilia Mwana</i>, its audio quality superior to the Earthworks disc.</div>
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Remmy issued more albums through the two decades that followed <i>Nalila Mwana</i>'s release. One other, <i>Sema</i>, appeared on WOMAD's label. Two others, <a href="https://realworldrecords.com/release/8/songs-for-the-poor-man/"><i>Songs For The Poor Man</i></a> and <a href="https://realworldrecords.com/release/56/mambo/"><i>Mambo</i></a>, appeared on Peter Gabriel's <a href="https://realworldrecords.com/">Real World</a> imprint, which inherited WOMAD's artist roster (including <a href="http://www.discogs.com/Nusrat-Fateh-Ali-Khan-Best-Of-Qawwal-And-Party-Volume-One/master/447531">Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan</a>) and marketing push. Predictably, the Real World releases were guided by English producers and sound as slick as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHo4UDCABUQ">Afro-Sheen</a> on the comb. These records possess superior audio quality, yet contain little of <i>Nalilia Mwana</i>'s visceral impact. The record you will hear today plays as rumba rock scored for a small group. It feels Latin, but with none of the hysteria that colors so much salsa. Remmy's voice is a hefty instrument, one that Super Matimila is entirely capable of supporting. He sings about the big issues: poverty, dislocation, life and death, shame and redemption. None of which may matter to you, but you can dance to all of it.</div>
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<a href="http://www.discogs.com/artist/Remmy+Ongala">Remmy Ongala</a> left the planet in December of 2010 at the age of 63 after a decade characterized by compromised health, Ongala having suffered a stroke in 2001. His final years as a performer were devoted to gospel music. His transition from secular repertoire was marked by the singer cutting off his signature dreadlocks. One could view this as a curious turn of events for a guy who gave every indication of being a first-rate hedonist, but I've heard of stranger things happening. Remmy's mom, who liked her boy's locks, had died sometime before, so I guess the tonsorial adjustment was only a matter of time. Regardless of his 'do, be it sainted or sinful, this much is obvious: Remmy Ongala played, as noted by the NY Times in their <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/arts/music/17ongala.html?ref=todayspaper">obit</a>, "with a groove and a conscience." Good enough for me.</div>
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<a href="http://www5.zippyshare.com/v/73921368/file.html">Nalilia Mwana @ 320</a> </div>
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count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-91057434591664186312012-12-14T14:17:00.003-08:002012-12-16T23:28:09.958-08:00Various Artists, Merry Sixmas<div class="thumb">
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<span class="photo_container pc_m">Some thirty or so years ago at this time of the year, when Lower Manhattan is shedding the Wild West image it acquires during the cash-poor '70s, several lucky humans receive Xmas greetings from</span><span class="photo_container pc_m"> a funny guy named Eddie Gorodetsky. Being a funny guy, the Eddie in question conveys his seasonal cheer in the form of</span><span class="photo_container pc_m"> a mixtape. I never meet this Mr. Gorodetsky, but I assume that he possesses something like exceptional wit, as I notice <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0331212/">his credit </a>on about half the programming I view on the Comedy Central network. I also award him brownie points in the yuck-yuck department as apparently this Eddie boasts of having the world's largest collection of Xmas-oriented music. Were I myself to brag about such a thing, it is a sure bet that I am laughing a-plenty on the inside.</span></div>
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<span class="photo_container pc_m">Mr. Gorodetsky has these cassettes professionally manufactured, as one does, and sends them out adorned with cute sleeves announcing that year's iteration of the mixtape. One year a friend of mine, Michael Weldon of <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotronic_Video">Psychotronic Video</a></i> fame, gives me an extra copy of the sixth Gorodetsky Xmas mix, appropriately titled <i>Merry Sixmas</i>. The tape becomes a staple around the Count's pad, providing as it does a delightful ambiance to accompany carousing and scaring the dog with wind-up toys and eating <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poutine">poutine</a> for breakfast and such other forms of seasonal misbehavior. </span><br />
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<span class="photo_container pc_m">Everyone who hears <i>Merry Sixmas </i>agrees that this Eddie is an OK sort, especially as he chops up an old Xmas episode of <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragnet_(series)">Dragnet</a></i> for interstitial material bridging his musical selections, chosen as they are with no little sensitivity. Joe Friday's dialog is parsed out in a manner that suggests each exchange between him and his partner inspires the song that follows. The more I think about it, the more I like this Eddie, as clearly it doesn't take many of him to make a dozen.</span><br />
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<span class="photo_container pc_m">The reputation of his seasonal brainchildren snowballs over time and next thing you know, </span>at one point in the '90s <span class="photo_container pc_m">Columbia Records commissions Eddie to make a CD featuring the greatest bits [read: the songs that they're willing to license] of his many Xmas tapes. The result, <i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/christmas-party-with-eddie-g-mw0000309619">Christmas Party With Eddie G.</a></i>, is a not a bad thing, as it features the versatile pipes of Billy West (the voice of <a href="http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/">John Krisfaluci</a>'s greatest creation, <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=stimpy&hl=en&client=safari&tbo=u&rls=en&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=WajLUOvNK8GuigLuiYHwBw&ved=0CEgQsAQ&biw=1436&bih=786">Stimpy The Cat</a>) in a skit about <a href="http://www.threestooges.com/">the Three Stooges</a> trying to make a Christmas record, alongside the usual spray of blues, rock and country tunes about decking the halls and whatnot. </span>All of this is fine for the mass market, though by no means does the CD possess the organic raunch and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvt4b_qwC_Q">Spike Jones</a>-type weirdness of Eddie's original cassettes.<br />
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<span class="photo_container pc_m">The years roll by and <i>Merry Sixmas</i> becomes a seasonal staple wherever Count Reeshard happens to alight. Eventually, after one too many relocations, the tape enters the fourth dimension and is not heard for far too long. The Count and his crew move once more this past summer, landing in <a href="https://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&oe=UTF-8&q=eagle+rock&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x80c2c3e1f2657969:0x4bd59b5715739362,Eagle+Rock,+Los+Angeles,+CA&gl=us&ei=rajLULmhFYfpigK64IBQ&ved=0CJkBELYD">Eagle Rock</a> with a minimum of trauma. It is there that <i>Merry Sixmas</i> resurfaces to the joy of all concerned. </span><span class="photo_container pc_m">So, what with said <a href="http://www.slashgear.com/sony-cease-cassette-walkman-manufacturer-soundwave-sheds-a-tear-22109826/">a</a></span><a href="http://www.slashgear.com/sony-cease-cassette-walkman-manufacturer-soundwave-sheds-a-tear-22109826/">udio cassettes</a> being the finicky items that they are – who knows if any other of the good Mr. Gorodetsky's <i>Merry ...mas</i> tapes are still rolling? – I am only too happy to digitize this particular ghost of Xmas Past. Put some <a href="http://www.drugs.com/rohypnol.html">rohypnol</a> in the nog and have fun. Because Eddie would want you to.<br />
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<span class="photo_container pc_m"><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?py46gahrl4gg915">Merry Sixmas SIDE A</a></span><br />
<span class="photo_container pc_m"><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?uy0zfy5b02ug9ac">Merry Sixmas SIDE B</a></span></div>
count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-64055948259702780722012-07-04T15:22:00.003-07:002018-02-21T12:34:42.186-08:00Various Artists, Channel 1 • Well Charge<div class="thumb" id="yui_3_5_0_3_1340081463292_1082" style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Zoë: Did he know it was your birthday? </span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I mean, he's the director, he's kinda busy. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Abernathy: He ate a piece of my birthday cake, and he got me a present. Yeah, </span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">I think he knew. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Zoë: What'd he get you?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Abernathy: He made me a tape. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Lee: He made you a tape? Wait, he didn't burn you a CD, he made you a tape? Oh, it's so romantic. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Abernathy: I know what you're gonna say so don't even go there. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Kim: That sounds like the test of true love to me.</span></span><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;">- from <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1028528/"><i>Deathproof</i></a>, dir. Quentin Tarantino, 2007</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Today's offering is my digital transcription of a cassette originally bundled within an early '80s edition of British music weekly <i>NME</i>. I was lucky enough to be in London when this tape appeared on newsstands. Even then, it represented an era gone by. <i>Well Charge</i> (distinct from <a href="http://itscomingoutofyourspeaker.blogspot.com/2007/11/revolutionaries-vital-dub-well-charged.html">the dub album cut from tracks by Channel 1 studio band the Revolutionaries, released by Virgin's Front Line label</a>) compiled 22 choice slices of cultural reggae spanning that music's golden era in the mid-'70s. Best of all – and I was unaware of this prior to monitoring my Pro Tools input – this is a mix tape in the truest and most affectionate sense of the term, each of its tracks needle-dropped from original vinyl. All by way of explaining the dialog quoted above. The foursome of deadly beauties — conjured by director Quentin Taratino for his wonderful <i>Grindhouse</i> film <i>Deathproof</i> — knew whereof they spoke.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Many of these cuts will be familiar to reggae aficionados. "Queen Majesty," which opens the set, later provided source material for U-Roy's deathless rap, "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NrssTZRwCE">Chalice In The Palace</a>." The Tamlins' "Hard To Confess" is, for my money, of equal value to the vocal trio's cover of "Baltimore." And "Shaka The Great" may represent my favorite articulation of the oft-versioned 'Chang Kai Shek' riddim. Really, though, it's all about the common denominators: stud-rattling amounts of bass pressure; the infinite field of reverberation; cuffed guitar chords that bring to mind asphalt bubbling in the heat of deepest summer; and vocals marinated in that one-of-a-kind admixture of suffering, herbal bliss and a reverence most </span><span style="font-size: small;">deeply felt</span><span style="font-size: small;">. Additionally, it's impressive how cool some of these vocalists appear to be when in actual fact they're desperately horny.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I tend not to rate music by the studio/record label (as so often the two were conjoined in Jamaica), save for<a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/artist/40"> the impossible amount of terrific sounds which poured from Lee Perry's Black Ark studio between 1974-'78</a>. This tape speaks worlds, though, about the wonders that were trapped on tape by the Hoo Kim brothers at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_One_Studios">Channel 1</a>. During the past decade, English music periodicals like <i>Q</i> and <i>Mojo</i> have enabled readers to amass large libraries of music by bundling CD's alongside their print issues. I've enjoyed and learned much from said discs (eg. <i>Mojo</i>'s <i>Roots Of The Sex Pistols</i>), but were one to pit <i>Well Charge-Channel 1</i> against any of these mix-discs-come-lately, my money would be on this most <i>rootical</i> potpourri. The tape earns the highest accolade I can confer upon a reggae compilation: It returns me, in the span of a very few seconds, to a mindset entered in 1977 upon first paging through Stephen Davis' and Peter Simon's impossibly great book, <i><a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Reggae_bloodlines.html?id=Z4cwAQAAIAAJ">Reggae Bloodlines</a>, </i>which had only just appeared at <a href="http://news.bookweb.org/news/firm-roots-connect-talking-leaves-buffalos-vibrant-arts-community">Everyman Books</a> in Buffalo, NY.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7215/7399295754_01ab06c78b_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="WC002" border="0" class="pc_img" data-thumbdata="" height="240" id="yui_3_5_0_3_1340081545731_1085" src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7215/7399295754_01ab06c78b_m.jpg" width="144" /></a></span><span style="font-size: small;">I won't belabor the merits of each track, if only so that I can get this into your hands while daylight remains with which to barbeque. Suffice to say that every single entry here is gorgeous, vocal cuts and instrumentals alike. Love it up, dear humans, and Jah bless Thomas Jefferson's libido. There will be more.</span></div>
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count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-64053930022247617252011-02-09T18:39:00.000-08:002012-12-18T14:03:29.069-08:00Various, 50 Years Of Film Music<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/5259204221/in/photostream/" id="yui_3_3_0_1_1297305623173789"><img class="loaded" id="yui_3_3_0_1_1297305623173796" src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5010/5259204221_cdeba260a3_b.jpg" style="height: 300px; opacity: 1; width: 300px; z-index: 1;" /></a><br />
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Today's compilation, first issued in 1973, preserves many eras within its silver-papered slip cover. The three albums comprising this boxed set commemorate five decades' worth of scores and memorable songs written for Warner Bros. films. To that end, <span style="font-style: italic;">50 Years Of Film Music</span> is successful and then some. It's a true labor of love and a good example of the synergy that could exist - but rarely did - between the film and record divisions of an entertainment empire.<br />
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As mentioned, there were three albums housed in the <span style="font-style: italic;">50 Years</span>... box. (A companion 3-lp boxed set, <span style="font-style: italic;">50 Years Of Film</span>, arrived concurrently with this set. It contained mostly dialog clips from W.B. films, with additional songs.) For the purposes of today's entry, framed by my own prejudices, I'm focusing solely on the first album, a sampler of instrumental film scores from Warners Bros.' movies. These themes, many of which will prove familiar, have been dubbed from the original mag reels used to create the sound portion of each respective film. This accounts for the tremulous, slightly 'watery' aspect of some of the older recordings heard on the album. It is obvious that much care was taken in transferring this material to vinyl. It's a shame that this collection wasn't reincarnated for the digital era. No matter, as today it - or at least one-third of it - is available to the discerning listeners who have once more stumbled upon this too-long moribund blog.<br />
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The first side of the album collates memorable stretches from three film scores written by one of the 20th Century's best film composers, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Exuberance, of the sort as can only be conjured by someone who genuinely loves their work, fairly drips from every note of the music written by Korngold for The Sea Hawk (1940), King's Row (1942) and The Adventures Of Robin Hood (1938). The last of these, for my money, represents his most inspired soundtrack and the sound of fun itself as enjoyed on a few levels: Errol Flynn playing Sherwood Forest's reigning badass; one gleeful rout after another, as Robin and his merry band continually tweak authority's nose in the person of Basil Rathbone's Sir Guy of Gisbourne; and mostly, Korngold's enthusiasm for the enterprise, which is contagious.<br />
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During the research phase for my little book (above right) about the triumphs and travails of composer <a href="http://www.vandykeparks.com/">Van Dyke Parks</a> as a Warner Bros. employee, I watched one day as Parks obsessed over music playing on his kitchen radio. The dial was tuned to <a href="http://www.kusc.org/">U.S.C.'s classical station</a>, whose DJ didn't back-announce the piece. Parks was genuinely in the grip of the symphonic work he'd just experienced. This episode was of special interest, as Parks has exhibited a more than healthy curiosity about the work of other musicians throughout his career, often to the extent of sidelining his own output. Rarely, though, had I seen him as smitten as he was by the broadcast on that particular day. A session violinist who worked often with Parks and who heard the same program, later gave him a recording of the piece. Turned out it was written by Korngold.<br />
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The album's B-side leapfrogs through many styles and distinct eras of film scoring. On par with Erich Korngold's work are the many scores composed by Max Steiner. The latter's writing on behalf of <span style="font-style: italic;">All This And Heaven Too</span> (1940), <span style="font-style: italic;">The Treasure Of Sierra Madre</span> (1948), <span style="font-style: italic;">Now, Voyager</span> (1942) and still another <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Errol_Flynn">Errol Flynn</a> swashbuckler, 1948's <span style="font-style: italic;">Adventures Of Don Juan</span>, are testament to Steiner's impressive range. His music provided the shadings and subtlety (or not) required variously by opulent period pieces, action-packed epics, psychological dramas or soap operas. These tracks are vestiges of a time when directors and audiences alike demanded and, indeed, thrived on melody and on music that hit each mark in carefully blocked scenes with the same finely calibrated timing required of the actors. 'Ambient' film music lay in wait, several decades down the track.<br />
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Scores of a more contemporary stripe are represented by the work of Alex North (whose baroque charts played off the onscreen martial combat during 1966's <span style="font-style: italic;">Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?</span>) and Dimitri Tiomkin, with his evocation of ancient Egypt conjured on behalf of <span style="font-style: italic;">Land Of The Pharaohs</span> (1955). Two impressive Franz Waxman efforts here as well: The Nun's Story (1959) and his music for the 1957 <span style="font-style: italic;">Sayonara</span>, the latter being a version of <span style="font-style: italic;">Madame Butterfly</span> set against the backdrop of the Korean War.<br />
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The collection is a pip, overall, and a reminder of a time when a record company wasn't afraid to splash out on an archival project such as this. <span style="font-style: italic;">50 Years</span>... was overseen by Warner Bros. Records' head publicist <a href="http://learning2share.blogspot.com/2007/05/music-to-read-stan-cornyns-liner-notes.html">Stan Cornyn</a>, a Character of the old school who authored the witty ad copy that did much to identify W.B. as a home for artists of intelligence and complexity during that company's 'golden era' of the late '60s and early '70s. The Ivy League-educated Cornyn obviously cared a great deal about this music, as did Rudy Behlmer, who selected and thoughtfully annotated the tracks included here.<br />
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<a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?vl5i2j0fzhui454">50 Years of Film Music - Pt. 1 @ 320</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?x731i8gu36nms61">50 Years of Film Music - Pt. 2 @ 320</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?i1v1dd6jczgp164">50 Years of Film Music - Pt. 3 @ 320</a>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-56097718869379192832010-05-03T18:11:00.000-07:002013-10-06T14:35:57.412-07:00Rico, Jama Rico<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2422/4498493910_28a4f1c22a.jpg" style="height: 300px; width: 300px;" /><br />
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Though doubtless I already owned a great many records containing the trombone playing of Rico Rodriguez, his name was impressed upon me only after he joined <a href="http://www.thespecials.com/">The Specials</a> partway through that group’s early ‘80s career trajectory. Rico — his first name alone has long been an imprimatur of quality in Jamaican music — was at least a generation older than anyone else signed to the 2-Tone label. Of his tenure with The Specials, group founder <a href="http://www.jerrydammers.com/">Jerry Dammers </a>once remarked that there was a lot less fucking around at rehearsals, once Rico came on board.<br />
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Rico was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1934 and subsequently attended the Alpha Boys’ School. He was a pupil of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Mary_Ignatius_Davis">Sister Mary Ignatius Davies</a>, who taught at the school from 1939 until her death in 2003; several reggae luminaries, including the doomed genius <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Drummond">Don Drummond</a>, Roland Alphonso and Lester Sterling among many others, had their interest in music nurtured by Sister Ignatius. She gained cred with her rude boy students by dint of owning a record collection of impressive size; this was a nun who ran a disco at the school on Saturday nights.<br />
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Leaving school, Rico recorded for many of the soundsystem proprietors who would become record producers: Clement Dodd, Duke Reid, Prince Buster. He played in hotel orchestras, won competitions on Jamaican radio; then, turning his back on the hit-or-miss existence of a black musician in the late ‘50s, Rico followed Don Drummond, his horn tutor at the Alpha school, to live at Renock Lodge in the Wareika Hills, home to <a href="http://www.reggae-reviews.com/countossie.html">Count Ossie and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari</a>. Rico’s description of this group as “more developed, mentally and musically, than the average musician” doesn’t quite do justice to a nearly cult-like ensemble, the Jamaican equivalent of <a href="http://homepage.uab.edu/moudry/">Sun Ra’s Arkestra</a>. Where Sun Ra and his fellow travelers of the spaceways used Fletcher Henderson’s charts as a jumping-off point to explore musical <i>terra incognita</i>, <a href="http://niceup.com/artists/count_ossie">Count Ossie</a>’s band was rooted in the hand drum-weighted rhythms of Rastafarian liturgical music. Of his time in the hills, performing with the group that recorded <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/tales-of-mozambique/id261552505" style="font-style: italic;">Tales Of Mozambique</a> and the multi-lp boxed set <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/grounation/id261519658" style="font-style: italic;">Grounation</a>, Rico said "When you play with them you can really explore. Most of what I know I learned from playing with them."<br />
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Rico left Jamaica in 1961, emigrating to the U.K. like so many citizens of the Commonwealth’s Caribbean outposts. He played in English jazz clubs and recorded two albums, neither of which he felt came close to representing his music. He worked on the line at the Ford plant, and played briefly in a group with the very young Ray Davies on guitar. Rico recalls the future Kink as an energetic sort, rolling on the floor while playing his guitar upside down; clearly, the well respected man about town was some years distant in the early ‘60s.<br />
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Come the 1970s, Rico signed with <a href="http://www.islandoutpost.com/about_us/our_founder/">Chris Blackwell</a>’s Island label, releasing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_from_Wareika" style="font-style: italic;">Man From Wareika</a>, an instrumental set focusing on the ska rhythms that had fallen out of fashion nearly a decade previous. The record was well received in the UK; though released in the US as well, it probably bypassed potential American customers owing to its appearance on a jazz label, Nemperor. (By the way, the dub version of this album is floating about cyberspace and is infinitely preferable to the released version.) After which, Rico joined the Specials, the most versatile of the ska revivalists associated with the 2-Tone label. The latter imprint would release two solo albums by Rico in the early ‘80s: <a href="http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/that_man_is_forward.html" style="font-style: italic;">That Man Is Forward</a> followed by today’s offering, <a href="http://www.2-tone.info/2tone.pl?rank450" style="font-style: italic;">Jama Rico</a>.<br />
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<img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4071/4497856471_ce7415f263.jpg" style="height: 300px; width: 300px;" /><br />
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Both albums pair Rico’s trombone with the flugelhorn of <a href="http://ricorodriguez.wikia.com/wiki/Dick_Cuthell">Dick Cuthell</a>, nearly all of the tracks from both records benefiting from the magical laminate created by the two musicians’ unison melodies. Recording for both albums was divided between English studios and producer/label owner <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Gibbs_%28record_producer%29">Joe Gibbs</a>’ facility in Jamaica. The Kingston sessions were engineered by the great <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2004/dec/09/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries1">Errol Thompson</a>, who conjured smoky ambiance throughout <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/artist/221">a series of fantastic dub albums</a> in the ‘70s. Thompson wound up managing a supermarket owned by Joe Gibbs, a fact that I am at a loss to explain, though he managed to find time to return to the control room in the years before <a href="http://www.reggae-vibes.com/concert/errolthompson/errolthompson.htm">his passing</a> in 2004.<br />
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Where <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/release/1276"><span style="font-style: italic;">That Man Is Forward</span></a> toggled between the ska expected of a 2-Tone release and a survey of cultural reggae rhythms then in fashion (“Chiang Kai Shek”), <span style="font-style: italic;">Jama Rico</span> followed with a more consolidated set owing much to the Nyabinghi drumming that underpinned Count Ossie’s music. The magic of multi-track recording allowed Rico himself to play the <a href="http://www.ilanddrums.com/History.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">funde</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">repeater</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">thunder</span></a> drums essential to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyabinghi_drums">the pulse of Rasta liturgy</a>, a very dread thing indeed. As befits royalty, an array of stellar Jamaican players rammed the studio for these tracks: Santa Davis, Skully, Sly & Robbie, Winston Wright, all of their names familiar from even a parvenu reggae enthusiast's collection. In their company Jerry Dammers acquits himself in good form, adding keyboard parts sufficient for snake charming and atmospheric production touches into the bargain.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Jama Rico</span> compares favorably with the late-in-life renaissance of other island-bred talents, most notably the 70’s output of Hawaii’s <a href="http://www.mele.com/music/artist/gabby+pahinui/">Gabby Pahinui</a> on Steve Siegfried’s <a href="http://www.surfingforlife.com/music.html">Panini</a> label. Rico is still with us, last I checked, and continues to perform and record, but none of his subsequent discs match the delectable malevolence and worthiness of this album, its imagery rendered in the inky strokes and dark washes characteristic of <a href="http://www.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=charles+addams+cartoons&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=xnbgS7z_JZiwsQPO3tHUAQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CB0QsAQwAA">Charles Addams</a>’ best paintings.<br />
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The record is nearly too cool to bear. Some listeners may require medication for this one – possibly a feisty little indica, or at very least an icy glass of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_wine"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Stone's</span></a> – but as I tend to suggest something along this line for the majority of my postings, one could be forgiven for assuming a particular mindset at work here. <span style="font-style: italic;">Seen</span>?<br />
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<a href="http://www69.zippyshare.com/v/4302330/file.html">JAMA RICO @ 256</a>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-51826807864097702072010-01-01T19:47:00.000-08:002010-01-17T12:17:22.802-08:00Lord Buckley, The Demon Verbals LP's<img style="width: 350px; height: 290px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2722/4236132044_6bd7239123.jpg" alt="Lord+Buckley by you." title="" class="reflect" /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Some men are born to their titles. Others win theirs. But Richard Buckley came into his title because a friend, with the unlikely name of Midas, went to a bankrupt circus to buy his kids a pony. With a fine nose for bargains, Midas bought the circus. And phoned Buckley for help. (What do I do now, daddy?)... The watchman led them through the warehouse, marched them past the line of mighty elephant rumps, past the dark roaring cages with thick aromatic clouds hanging overhead. They halted before the wardrobe trunks. From the first trunk Buckley pulls out a vast purple robe studded with emeralds, rubies, sapphires, all of fine solid glass. The robe is strangely shaped but he wraps it carefully around him, head to ankles. It leaves a broad trail in the dust as he steps over to the mirror. "Is he crazy?," the watchman asks. "That there's an elephant hanging. Belongs to the elephant!" But Buckley stares at his reflection. He bows. "Your excellency," he whispers.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Richard, now Lord Buckley, swept berobed from the warehouse and on through the streets of Chicago with people pretending not to stare, with the wind off the lake whipping his train sky-high, making a great clatter with the glass jewels. Arrived at his apartment, he set about celebrating his title, as nobility obliges. They came from everywhere, politicians, pimps and bankers, Negro musicians and Italian gangsters, chorus girls, policemen, pitchmen and hookers. And together they worked out the etiquette of the royal court. For Lord Buckley was not the man to keep all that nobility to himself. He knew that Lord-ship is no good unshared. So it was "Your Ladyship, this...Your Grace that...Will your highness please let go of my goddam leg?..." They papered the kitchen with eviction notices. Everybody had a fine time...and the party lasted three years.</span><br /><br /><div> – excerpted from Dan James' liner notes, <span style="font-style: italic;">Way Out Humor</span> (World Pacific, 1959)<br /><br />Today's post was inspired in part by <a href="http://sagactor.blogspot.com/2009/12/lord-buckley.html">a recent radio special</a> that, to the credit of those who assembled it, managed to cram many salient points as regards the fluid talents and deeply, albeit cheerfully messy life of <a href="http://www.lordbuckley.com/">Lord Buckley</a> into a half-hour of audio.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, this sent me back to the shelves, pulling out old lp's and Oliver Trager's indispensable biography, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dig-Infinity-Life-Lord-Buckley/dp/1566491576/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263356411&sr=1-1">Dig Infinity! The Life and Art of Lord Buckley</a></i>. I listened to many of His Lordship's routines and read anecdote after anecdote culled from his pell-mell transit though this veil of tears.<br /><br />Lord Buckley was 'the hipster's hipster,' a comedian who often neglected punch lines, so enthralled was he with the nuances of speech and the capacity of his own storytelling to cast spells upon nightclub audiences. His delivery was based in a sincere appreciation of the patois of the black jazz musicians with whom he consorted in 1930's Chicago. He loved the rhythm and the inventiveness of their argot, and from this Buckley formulated his cabaret persona, one charged with street energy and wholly in love with what he termed 'this sweet swingin' sphere' and all those who rode upon it.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/4270172511/"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2798/4270172511_e6f20a43d2_m.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>I first visited San Francisco in the early '80s. My trip was well timed: City Lights Books had just issued a slim volume entitled <i><a href="http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qsort=p&isbn=0872861201&siteID=eSmaWuUpnDY-S.uD8glvK7wSTZxVOYF_oQ">Hiparama of the Classics</a></i>, wherein several of Buckley's best routines were transcribed. It was, and remains a worthy addition to the shelf of little books that should change the world (<i>The Elements Of Styl</i>e by Strunk & White; Chairman Mao's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_red_book">little red book</a>; Tanizaki's <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Shadows">In Praise Of Shadows</a></i>). <i>Hiparama</i>... collects seven transcriptions of Buckley's best-loved monologues, these prefaced by Joseph Jablonsky's encomium which goes some ways toward establishing Buckley's rightful place in the pantheon of 20th Century comedians, orators and overall singular characters.<br /><br />Having said this, I found the book frustrating, as might anyone who derived pleasure from the sound of Lord Buckley's untrammeled musings. It was an incomplete experience, ultimately doomed to disappoint for the same reasons as do the various attempts to create films (or even <a href="http://www.bbcshop.com/Drama+Arts/Jeeves-and-Wooster-The-Radio-Drama-Collection/invt/9781408426791">reasonably spiffy radio plays</a>) from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._G._Wodehouse">P.G. Wodehouse</a>'s evergreen Bertie & Jeeves books. The authors, in each case, have been placed at a remove from the words that they imbued with verve and incandescence. </div><div><br /></div><div>Reinterpreting literary classics and bible stories and historical accounts in the florid lingo he deemed 'the hip semantic' was the work of a man who thought as no other, but the lion's share of Lord Buckley's art was bound up in his performance. Unfortunately he died in 1960, when I was a mere sproglet, so my only experience of Lord Buckley in motion - perhaps the best way to phrase this - was viewing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw1eSo8-Zns">a surprise appearance</a> he made as a contestant (!) on Groucho Marx's TV game show, <i>You Bet Your Life. </i>One suspects that Groucho knew full well to whom he was speaking; Buckley's notoriety had spread to both coasts, and this most righteously hip comedian numbered Frank Sinatra and the television variety impresario Ed Sullivan among his fans. (Buckley's alliance with the Chairman of the Board was somewhat strained when the former led a conga line of naked women to a ringside table during a Sinatra club engagement.) Still, if the verbal Marx brother was aware of His Lordship's reputation, he did a great job of playing the straight man to Buckley, the latter's speech taking flight merely upon being asked about his home town. Beyond that, I have only seen <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHPrNCQQBvY">this</a> frustratingly truncated film of Buckley in action on a nightclub stage.</div><div><br /></div><div>All of which could prove, as Ian Frazier pointed out about the Sioux leader Crazy Horse, that Lord Buckley simply existed beyond the abilities of his day's technology to capture him. It is easy enough to conflate a Buckley performance in one's imagination, enabled by the scant evidence that exists: His regal posture that seemed to extend even the height of a man who stood six foot, six inches to begin with; the impeccable tailoring, tending toward formal wear; his signature mustache, its components springing from the lip like an especially vibrant pair of curb feelers; a wide-eyed countenance that suggested awe inspired either by the simple act of existence or a bottomless appetite for elixirs and chemicals (probably both, as Buckley was a standard-setting transcendental hedonist); and his ability to carry off an outsized boutonniere, a tuxedo and a pith helmet within the same ensemble. Add to that his voice, its hill-and-dale range belonging in the good company of <a href="http://www.yma-sumac.com/">Yma Sumac</a> and <a href="http://www.beefheart.com/">Don Van Vliet</a>, informed by an accent that suggested fox hunts and stockyards in the same phrase. From such a cornucopia of irradiated ingredients, each with a half-life Edward Teller might envy, one may summon this extraordinary figure just as surely as if you'd rubbed a lamp found on the set of a <a href="http://img.listal.com/image/480509/500full-maria-montez.jpg">Maria Montez</a> film – such was His Lordship's potency.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/4236094022/"><img style="width: 198px; height: 203px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2580/4236094022_9d9a996e05_m.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/4235317831/"><img style="width: 203px; height: 203px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2490/4235317831_5a10365e8f_m.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">(Inner sleeve layouts from the Demon Verbals reissue packaging.)</span><br /><br />Still, though his art was very much about performing, there were key moments within each of his monologues that would not be denied, momentary insights into the character behind The Character that was His Lordship. Skidding into an aside, Buckley's voice would drop his stentorian affect, his mock English-ness would ebb briefly, and he would allow that he "was a people worshiper...that every man and every woman had within them a god and goddess." There was no doubting the sincerity of his words. Of course, in the next moment, his mind skyrocketing once more as he essayed the lives of those he admired and, to an extent, resembled: The Mighty Hip Eine (Albert Einstein), The Naz (Jesus of Nazareth), or The Gasser (<a href="http://www.bookrags.com/biography/alvar-nunez-cabeza-de-vaca/">Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca</a>, the Spanish conquistador who explored the Americas).<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Buckley sold many comedy records during his career peak in the 1950's, for labels such as Vaya and <a href="http://www.jimflora.com/images/fineartprints/fap-pages/lord-buckley.jpg">RCA</a>. The live recordings preserved on three albums released initially by the World Pacific label were subsequently reissued in the early '80s on Demon Verbals, a spoken word imprint of the UK label group Edsel/Demon. Though I was introduced to today's subject via <i><a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:gpfyxqqgldse">A Most Immaculately Hip Aristocrat</a></i>, the studio recording (actually, a living room performance complete with peripheral noises from passing aircraft and the recordist's hectoring wife) released posthumously on Frank Zappa's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_Records">Straight</a> label, the full luminosity of Lord Buckley was revealed through these three lp's. Some were re-released briefly on CD, all are furiously rare and expensive in the present day.<br /><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/4235318161/"><img style="width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2714/4235318161_20d48f81aa_m.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/4236094526/"><img style="width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2760/4236094526_c291cf3421_m.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/4236094218/"><img style="width: 200px; height: 199px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2539/4236094218_b5995eba43_m.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/4236094328/"><img style="width: 200px; height: 199px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2536/4236094328_a03aa99bca_m.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/4235317593/"><img style="width: 200px; height: 201px;" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4062/4235317593_a9d91448dc_m.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/4235317521/"><img style="width: 200px; height: 202px;" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4048/4235317521_d149682c9e_m.jpg" border="0" /></a></div><div><br />Each of these recordings, it must be said, is essential to a complete education. For this reason, I'll dedicate today's post to <a href="http://modadelic.blogspot.com/">Spaced Saviour</a>, a fellow blogger with immaculately considered priorities, whose entries compile all that is lacking in contemporary culture. His is the work of a True Believer, one whose memory has not been voided by the Great Con of the past quarter century and more. Having just matriculated to the third iteration of his blog, I'll offer hope that his run extends well toward the next millennium.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, humbled by thoughts of a wordbender <span style="font-style: italic;">non pareil</span>, I will quit forthwith and let one of Lord Buckley's numerous friends in high places – one <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Miller">Henry Miller</a>, he of <i>Nexus</i>, <i>Plexus</i> and <i>Sexus</i> reknown – take us to the bridge:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>"To Lord Buckley, his most euphoric Lordship, greetings! What a treat to hear your new shatterbusting recording delivered with variations à la Paganini, Gilles de Rais and the Marquis of Queensbury! It seems to me that your Lordship opened a new vein, leading from the medulla oblongata (hold on to this one!) and the Cloaca Maxima. It's all so very alive and jumpin' and in the pauses one can hear the atoms exploding out there in the Milky Way where the grass comes up every once in ten billion years and there are no moth balls or frigidaires, no box office receipts, no railroads, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_%28The_Rosy_Crucifixion%29">no crucifixions rosy or otherwise</a>... It is very far out, your Lordship..."<br /><br /></i><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/329055108/LB_B_R_O_M_D_S.zip.html">BAD-RAPPING OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE</a><i><br /><br /></i><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/329048017/LB_B_H_M_A_Y_T.zip.html">BLOWING HIS MIND (AND YOURS TOO)</a><i><br /><br /></i><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/329052103/LB_I_C.zip.html">LORD BUCKLEY IN CONCERT</a><i><br /><br /></i> </div>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-26684972357021928692009-04-05T21:44:00.000-07:002013-10-09T14:21:38.749-07:00Pamelo Mounk'a, Samantha<img alt="Samantha_front by you." class="reflect" onload="show_notes_initially();" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3087/3102297293_85a0290782.jpg?v=0" style="height: 303px; width: 300px;" title="" /><br />
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As a youngster, Yves Andre M’Bemba spent more time than was probably good for him hanging around Léopoldville’s Kongo Bar. Like a lot of <a href="http://thehoundblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/ron-asheton-3-danny-fields-on-ron.html">kids</a> gripped by music’s unholy thrall, he wrote songs instead of doing homework. And he could sing.<br />
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The saxophonist Jean Serge Essous, co-founder of both OK Jazz and Les Bantous de la Capitale first hired Yves, a mere teenager, in 1963; the youngest singer in what was then known as Orchestre Bantou (or Bantous Jazz) was re-christened Pablito. He would leave and rejoin Les Bantous throughout his adult career. By then he was known by an altogether more familiar name, Pamelo Mounk’a.<br />
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Having left the fold, then returning, Pablito enjoyed a three year reunion with Les Bantous. His relations with the group soured once more, at which point Pamelo followed Sam Mangwana – the latter having accrued considerable success in the ‘70s - to the Third World’s Nashville, that being Paris. There, in 1981, Pamelo reunited with <a href="http://globalgroovers.blogspot.com/2009/03/eddy-gustave-merengues-1-eddyson.html">Eddy Gustave</a>, a saxophonist from Guadeloupe. Gustave had become a record producer of significance; Pamelo had first met Gustave a few years before during one of the latter’s scouting trips to Paris. Gustave’s label, Eddy’son, subsequently had packaged a compilation of Les Bantous’ most popular tunes.<br />
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(Incidentally, Pamelo added the stage surname <span style="font-style: italic;">Mounk’a</span>, a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bateke">Bateke</a> name meaning ‘glory,’ at some point prior to prior to his debut as solo artist. He had previously used the word in a song – ‘Alléluia Mounk’a’ – with Trio Cepakos.)<br />
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Having decided to break Pamelo as a solo act, producer Gustave convened the cream of expatriate Congolese musicians then living in Paris. The guitarist Master Mwana Congo (originally known to his mom as Ignace Nkounkou) was the lynchpin element of Gustave’s studio players. Pablo Lubadika Porthos provided the mi-solo guitar, being the muted, continuous arpeggio parts that are the spine of any soukous arrangement. Lea Lignazi from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cameroons">Cameroons</a> sang backing vocals, keening and silvery, colored perfectly to complement M. Mounka’s own honeyed voice. Also color-coordinated to the lead singer’s timbre was the horn section, feigning and darting like the fists of Ali the Greatest, with Jimmy N’vondo playing sax in unison with trumpeter Fredo ‘Tete Fredo’ Ngando. Together, they generated in short order the eponymous Eddy’son debut of <a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/search?q=pamelo+mounk%27a"><span style="font-style: italic;">Pamelo Mounk’a</span></a>, followed by today’s featured album, <span style="font-style: italic;">Samantha</span>.<br />
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On the strength of these two releases, Pamelo Mounk’a and Eddy Gustave became leading figures of the rapidly developing African music scene in Paris during the first half of the '80s. Jane Kramer, cousin to art photographer Stephen Shore, wrote a detailed account of that scene (“Letter From Europe”) in the May 19, 1986 issue of The New Yorker.<br />
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I'd love to tell you that I was on the scene as all of the above took place, were it either in Kinshasa or in Paris. Truth be told, I gleaned this breadbasket of fun facts by the same means available to any sensible person: I bought a copy of Gary Stewart's defining monograph on Congolese music, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rumba-River-History-Popular-Congos/dp/1859843689/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238998499&sr=1-1"><span style="font-style: italic;">Rumba On The River</span></a>. Soon as <a href="http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1733748_1733758_1736345,00.html">Bezos</a>'s elves figure how to squeeze this most valuable tome into my iPhone's Kindle app, I'll probably buy it again. (Stewart's book contains an anecdote, related by Pamelo himself, about the car pictured above. The story will make most people laugh. Those among our number who have been signed to a record company may respond differently.)<br />
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I have spent enough column inches in earlier posts exalting the glories of Pamelo’s voice and the wonderful songs that he wrote, each and every one an evergreen item in my library. The songwriters Gamble & Huff put it best: "<span style="font-style: italic;">If you don't know me by now...</span>" I’d hazard that there's never been a time like the present for this album, a balm for dispirited ears amidst our ongoing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloomy_Sunday">gloomy Sunday</a>. The four songs contained here play as extended vamps, rolling toward the horizon with no apparent need to conclude; any one of them easily trumps potassium or <a href="http://www.louonvine.com/">pig candy</a> for beating depression. Liquid, sexy, congenial in the extreme, tapered at the cuffs and perpetually arriving, <span style="font-style: italic;">Samantha</span> is the genuine article.<br />
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<a href="http://www58.zippyshare.com/v/98241365/file.html"><b>SAMANTHA</b></a>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-22060901740070427752008-06-14T12:34:00.000-07:002012-12-20T00:03:50.381-08:00Various Artists, Waikiki Surf Battle<img alt="" class="reflect" onload="show_notes_initially();" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3046/2577828249_ddb5f0d292.jpg?v=0" style="height: 275px; width: 275px;" /><br />
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An extraordinary document culled from an era when humans of an early and impressionable age really, really, <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> cared about music. This <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LP_album">lp</a> contains key performances from two years' worth ('63 & '64) of competitions held in a Hawai'ian bandshell. All the bands in question are practitioners of instrumental <a href="http://www.surfmusic.com/">surf music</a>, a genre that just might be the straight line connecting classical music theory and the endless <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostinati"><span style="font-style: italic;">ostinati</span></a> of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangerine_Dream">Tangerine Dream</a>, as first drawn by iconoclast guitarists <a href="http://www.dickdale.com/">Dick Dale</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_B._Marvin">Hank B. Marvin</a>. (I interviewed the English guitarist <a href="http://fredfrith.com/">Fred Frith</a> in the pages of <a href="http://www.thewire.co.uk/" style="font-style: italic;">The Wire</a> a few years back. Listening to <a href="http://www.btinternet.com/%7Eshadows_archive/shadows/Default.htm">The Shadows</a> playing "Wonderful Land," Frith became very quiet. The record finished and he noted that "Without Hank B. Marvin, there would be no <a href="http://www.sydbarrett.net/">Syd Barrett</a>." His voice, as he said this, took on a markedly reverential tone. I didn't have reason to doubt him; still, I thought about that for some time afterwards.)<br />
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18 bands comprised the 1963 show and 20 competed in the following year. An representative selection from each battle-of-the-bands made it onto this album; however, not all of the prize-winners are present. The Kona Casuals took 3rd place in 1964. Aren't you curious to hear what a group named <span style="font-style: italic;">The Kona Casuals </span>sounded like, much less learn what they were wearing? Unfortunately we will never know, though this disappointment is occluded by the superabundance of primal guitar beating in evidence throughout the program.<br />
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Which brings us to the varying levels of musicianship on display during <a href="http://www.reverbcentral.com/reviews/comp/waikiki3126.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Waikiki Surf Battle</span></a>. You could see where The Spiedels (like the <a href="http://www.kingstonfinejewelry.com/watches/index.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">wristwatch</span></a>, I'm guessing) would win, place or at least show in any year. Angie & the Originals, an all-girl group, actually err on the side of tidiness at intervals, their phrasing so mannered and crisp. Other bands take liberties with tempo; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubato"><span style="font-style: italic;">rubato</span></a> might be the kinder designation in this context. Each of the groups is worthy of the high decibel appreciation they receive, though it's not an altogether bad thing to keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wyatt">Robert Wyatt</a>'s words in mind: "You may notice some technical inadequacies in some of my performances - a hesitant beat here, a dodgy note there - these are of course entirely deliberate and reproduced as evidence of my almost painful sincerity..." Rest assured: The Infasions (sic) are no less sincere.<br />
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<img alt="" class="reflect" onload="show_notes_initially();" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3115/2577828345_8b043a989d.jpg?v=0" style="height: 268px; width: 273px;" /><br />
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In some instances, most notably the Royal Victors' rendition of "High Surf" that begins the 1963 Battle, the original vinyl sports egregious surface noise galore, some of which I've taken pains to expunge. An ineluctable quality, possibly the <span style="font-style: italic;">organic miasma</span> spoken of by Frank Zappa, remains intact on these cuts, all the better to enhance the <a href="http://www.radiohof.org/news/lowellthomas.html">Lowell-Thomas-"You are there!"</a> aspect essential to one's enjoyment of this summery ritual. The late Mr. Zappa was referring to the panties frequently <a href="http://www.science.uva.nl/%7Erobbert/zappa/files/jpg/Roxy_And_Elsewhere.jpg">tossed onstage by women during sets by his band, the Mothers of Invention</a>; collected by the band's roadies, the undergarments in question - unwashed, of course, all the better to preserve said miasma - ultimately became constituent elements of <a href="http://www.jemz.com/musc/music.html">a very large quilt</a>.<br />
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The reference isn't so terribly off-base as all that. A great many Hawai'ian girls make a hell of a lot of noise in the course of <span style="font-style: italic;">Waikiki Surf Battle</span>. Another concert released on lp a year or so later, <a href="http://bluestormmusic.com/store/images/kinks_liveatkelvinhall.jpg"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Kinks Live At Kelvin Hall</span></a>, contained audience response approaching the status of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concr%C3%83%C2%A8te"><span style="font-style: italic;">musique concrete</span></a>; considered in this light, the white noise generated by The Statics' appearance at the bandshell might have raised a smile on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Schaeffer">Pierre Schaeffer</a>'s weathered mug. There's probably as much screaming done in the course of these sets as during contemporary appearances by the Beatles or <a href="http://img.metro.co.uk/i/pix/2008/03/RollingStones_450x300.jpg">the Rolling Stones</a>. I'd venture that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_oral_contraceptive_pill">The Pill</a> had as yet to appear in Hawai'i when these recordings were made.<br />
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<a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?l6v6z0m3ymmcq5h">WAIKIKI SURF BATTLE Side 1</a><br />
<a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?26xbxep3w96ke0v">WAIKIKI SURF BATTLE Side 2</a><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-9128858202379598752007-10-24T14:07:00.004-07:002012-12-20T13:36:45.819-08:00Pete 'Mad Daddy' Myers, The Final WHK Broadcast<img alt="" class="reflect" onload="show_notes_initially();" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2222/1719564125_4a0d7f8d4a.jpg?v=0" style="height: 296px; width: 300px;" /><br />
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<span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">From our secret laboratory</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">You know the MAD DADDY story</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">In the Sponge Rubber Tower!</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Rockin' and reelin' and havin' a ball!</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Swingin' and singin'</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Straight-jacket and all!</span></span><br />
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A few years ago, knowing that we both treasured respective pantheons of <a href="http://www.geocities.com/musicfornimrods/radio.htm">radio gods</a>, I sent a copy of this vintage radio aircheck to <a href="http://www.geocities.com/musicfornimrods/rd.htm">Reverend Dan</a>, the DJ whose <a href="http://www.geocities.com/musicfornimrods/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Music for Nimrods</span></a> show on Los Angeles' <a href="http://www.kxlu.com/main/index.asp">KXLU</a> I've enjoyed for a decade's time and more. I hadn't considered sending the CD-R as a seasonal gesture, but that's how it was framed when Dan played it on the last Saturday of that particular October, some hours after the bars and liquor stores closed. "If anyone owns Halloween," Dan wailed, "It has to be <span style="font-style: italic;">Mad Daddy</span>!"<br />
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Born in San Francisco, Pete Myers made his on-air debut with Armed Forces Radio during World War II. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and worked briefly as an actor. Myers returned to radio initially at a San Diego station, then moved to WJW in Cleveland, Ohio, on Lake Erie's south shore, in 1958. There, he was the host of that station's late night <span style="font-style: italic;">Shock Theatre</span>; though Myers' tenure as horror movie host lasted only a short time, he would influence the subsequent emergence of Ernie Anderson's legendary <a href="http://www.psychotronicvideo.com/wow/ghoulardi/fangoria.shtml"><span style="font-style: italic;">Ghoulardi</span></a> character at the same station.<br />
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It was at this point that Myers began perfecting his <span style="font-style: italic;">Mad Daddy</span> persona, a frantic, neo-Beat disc jockey predisposed to speed-rapping in rhyme. In short order, <span style="font-style: italic;">Mad Daddy</span> became the baddest and most popular DJ on Cleveland's WHK. <span style="font-style: italic;">Mad Daddy</span> was a mutation, <a href="http://www.mutatovisual.com/beautifulmutants/gallery.html">a beautiful one</a>, as could only have been cultured in the Ohio city often derided as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland,_Ohio"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Mistake By The Lake</span></a>.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 130%; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Boppin' and crashin' and ATOM SMASHIN'...</span></span><br />
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Myers' on-air presence was a high-water mark of feral energy on American AM radio prior to the British Invasion of the early '60s. He stormed thousands of then-new portable <a href="http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Atrium/1031/trans/1trans.html">transistor radios</a>, babbling a private language rife with signs and signifiers seemingly drawn in equal portions from <a href="http://www.surrealism.org/">surrealism</a>, the monster/motorhead imagery of car customizers like <a href="http://www.edroth.com/">Ed "Big Daddy" Roth</a> and gimmicky <a href="http://imdb.com/name/nm0145336/">William Castle movies</a>. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Mad Daddy Show</span> was awash in continuous sound effects, maniacal laughter, tons of runaway repeat-echo, all to the accompaniment of many, many greasy rock'n'roll and rhythm'n'blues 45's. Myers didn't work with prescribed playlists, nor was he encumbered by some draconian station format. The high energy music of his day, made by <a href="http://www.intheredrecords.com/pages/andre.html">blacks</a>, <a href="http://www.rockabillyhall.com/CollinsKids1.html">whites</a> and <a href="http://www.ritchievalens.com/">Hispanics</a>, the stuff universally reviled by older folks, was manna for <span style="font-style: italic;">Mad Daddy</span> and his following, all of those impressionable, horned-out, delinquent ears waiting in the darkness of a Cleveland night.<br />
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During the changeover between stations, he found himself banned from the airwaves temporarily, owing to fine print within his former employer's contract. The solution to a possible lowering of <span style="font-style: italic;">Mad Daddy</span>'s local profile was to jump out of a Piper Cub flying over Lake Erie. When Myers hosted area record hops and midnight live shows at the peak of his popularity, he often dressed in a Dracula costume. He opted for a Zorro outfit on the day of his big leap, the better to promote the tie-in song from a Disney TV show of the day. A bed of Jello in the waters of Lake Erie was promised as his landing pad, but Myers was unable to secure enough gelatin powder prior to take-off. He did jump, though, and survived both parachuting for the first time from 2,000 feet up and landing in what was already becoming a notoriously polluted, oxygen-deprived lake. <span style="font-style: italic;">Mad Daddy</span>'s sustaining notoriety was assured.<br />
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Foolhardy but cool. Myers' stunt was immortalized in song many years later, via The Cramps' tribute, "Mad Daddy." Herewith, an inspirational couplet:<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Gotta pair of shades and purple shoes,<br />Gotta parachute to land on you</span>.<br />
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At the behest of U.K. music periodical <a href="http://www.thewire.co.uk/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Wire</span></a>,<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>I interviewed Lux Interior and Poison Ivy Rorschach of <a href="http://www.thecramps.com/">the Cramps</a>, at their pad in Glendale; though four years of magazine work have passed since that evening and several more preceded it, my visit with Lux and Ivy stands as the most fun I've ever had pointing a microphone at someone else. Well into the conversation, maybe four glasses of <a href="http://www.vampire.com/">Vampire wine</a> into the conversation, the subject of Cleveland radio surfaced. Lux jumped from his rattan chair, hollering, "You're gonna be jealous!" He darted into another room, to return with a framed and autographed ("<span style="font-style: italic;">To Eric...</span>") version of this photo, obtained during his childhood:<br />
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<img alt="" class="reflect" onload="show_notes_initially();" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2086/1734110748_3d0898c859.jpg?v=0" style="height: 239px; width: 179px;" /><br />
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The regard Lux held for the picture was palpable; it was as though he'd managed to chip off a shard of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux">Lascaux</a> cave painting, perhaps from that portion of the cave commemorating Cro-Magnon horror hosts and DJ's, and smuggled it back home. This was no mere fan club 8x10, but clearly a document possessed of life-altering power. And he was right; I <span style="font-style: italic;">was</span> jealous.<br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">They got the pop and the bop and the rhythm and the blue...</span></span><br />
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In 1959, WNEW hired Myers, the wildest DJ anywhere at that moment in history, to bring his transgressive style to New York radio. WNEW's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Mad Daddy Show</span> first aired on July 4th, 1959. The new show elicited immediate disapproval from the station's audience, at the time very much reflecting an upper middle-class demographic. They weren't about to sit tight for his bizarre turns of phrase or the antic tenor of a show that defied squares to make sense of it all. (Though enquiring minds would doubtless love to know, the reaction of WNEW listeners to the phrase <span style="font-style: italic;">mello jello</span> has gone unrecorded by history.) The station's management eliminated <span style="font-style: italic;">The Mad Daddy</span> after a single broadcast. Myers stayed at WNEW as just another announcer, but in 1963 he moved to New York's 1010 WINS. Here his new boss, by splendid chance, turned out to have been Myers' intern during the latter's Cleveland stay. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Mad Daddy Show </span>returned to Sponge Rubber Tower. All was right, for a while.<br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;"><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">...the winky, blinky light in my groovy SKULL!!!</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Mad Daddy</span>'s renaissance lasted for two years, until WINS changed to an <span style="font-style: italic;">all news, all the time</span> format. Pete Myers then returned, <span style="font-style: italic;">sotto voce</span>, to WNEW. The Manhattan station, still regarding him as something of a necessary evil, changed his shift from afternoons to evenings in October, 1968. On the first night of the new time shot, the 40-year-old Myers committed suicide with a shotgun in the bathroom of his apartment on East 76th Street.<br />
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<span style="font-weight: bold;">TECHNICAL NOTE:</span><br />
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This aircheck is swathed in what might best be described as galactic fog, the product of many generations of tape duplication. As one would suspect, <span style="font-style: italic;">Mad Daddy</span> was capable of generating distortion galore by his own means, aside from the artifacts of home taping-as-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat"><span style="font-style: italic;">samizdat</span></a>. Myers obviously enjoyed an adversarial relationship with the audio chain of commercial radio. He can be heard on this broadcast subjecting WHK's signal to the usual amounts of punishment, causing the microphone to oscillate and produce waveforms of its own under the pressure of Myers' untrammeled alter ego.<br />
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<img alt="" class="reflect" onload="show_notes_initially();" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2001/1734110544_7b8ad7a41c.jpg?v=0" style="height: 159px; width: 237px;" /><br />
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<a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?r2gklt655p5ir7l">MAD DADDY: HIS FINAL WHK SHOW</a>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-85260309298876555192007-09-18T00:41:00.000-07:002012-12-20T00:06:43.418-08:00Ustad Bismillah Khan, The Magnificence Of Stereo<span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/1397593443/"><img alt="" class="reflect" onload="show_notes_initially();" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1002/1397593443_e591aa546a.jpg?v=0" style="height: 280px; width: 280px;" /> </a></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />In previous <span style="font-style: italic;">NCIP</span> posts, something like evangelism carried the day. I was a man with a mission, hell-bent to rope you on my obsessions of the week/month/season, a mission that I plan to continue. Today's entry, </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">however,</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> requires disclosure; either it will hold appeal...or it won't. The sound of the Indian double reed instrument known as the <i>shehnai</i> is not for everyone. Its timbre a hybrid of oboe and soprano saxophone, the shehnai nestles comfortably alongside such particular tastes as </span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><i><a href="http://www.sushifaq.com/sushi-items/sushi-items-uni.htm">uni</a></i>, the films of <a href="http://imdb.com/name/nm0654868/">Yasujiro Ozu</a>, the chile that they used to serve at <a href="http://www.waterwinterwonderland.com/dragstrips.asp">Motor City Dragway</a>, the best episodes of <a href="http://www.beefheart.com/">Captain Beefheart</a>'s career, <a href="http://www.krazy.com/">Krazy Kat</a> cartoons, <a href="http://www.lordbuckley.com/">Lord Buckley</a>'s monologues...you probably see what I'm getting at here. There's really no fence-sitting to be done. First, listeners should be willing to give over to the spare, ascetic form of North Indian classical music. Then, assuming an affection for the sculpture made from cigarette smoke that is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raga">raga</a>, we can begin to consider the version according to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismillah_Khan">Ustad Bismillah Khan</a>. At which point it gets serious.<br /><br /><a href="http://flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/1400321639/"><img alt="Shehnai" height="47" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1273/1400321639_a076c155e6_m.jpg" width="216" /></a></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />My introduction to the piercing and plaintive tone of Bismillah Khan's shehnai happened in one of my favorite settings, a bootleg restaurant. Perhaps you've enjoyed something similar: There's no certificate of inspection on the wall, because the city isn't aware of the </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">existence of the</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> eatery in question. I had attended a concert at Toronto's Music Gallery ("No tunes allowed" read the sign over the entrance) in the company of a Toronto native whom, </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">a few years before,</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> I had bullied into becoming my friend. After the concert, the promise of an amazing meal lured us upstairs. We entered a loft of defining bohemian mien above the gallery. I recall the ambience as being the brighter side of stygian. </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">We stumbled over other diners in the gloom.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Throw pillows sufficed for seating. Discussion and smoke wafted about the space at knee-cap height. </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Indian food was being prepared and </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">the air itself was nearly saffron-colored as a result</span><span style="font-size: 100%;">. And, as is often the case with off-the-books dining (for whatever reason), lots of lp sleeves were scattered about. Nearly all of these held Indian albums. I picked up a record jacket that felt light to the touch and, of course, its mesmerizing contents issued from the house system in that moment. I was hearing Bismillah Khan for the first time and, yes, I wound up in love with the sound of shehnai. Not immediately, as I'll admit to being enveloped and audibly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroshock_gun">tasered</a> by what my fellow Detroiters might recognize as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weirdness">weirdness</a> of it all. After ten or so minutes the shehnai player had moved out of the drifting, free-meter portion of the raga known as <i><a href="http://www.chandrakantha.com/articles/indian_music/alap.html">alap</a></i> and into the rhythmic movements that followed. I was pole-axed with happiness by this point in the proceedings.<br /><br /><a href="http://flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/1397593443/"><img alt="" class="reflect" onload="show_notes_initially();" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1045/1397593517_dbe7241a1f.jpg?v=0" style="height: 280px; width: 280px;" /></a></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><i>The Magnificence Of Stereo</i> </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">was the album that I heard during that unforgettable meal (involving as it did celestial <i><a href="http://www.route79.com/food/channa-masala.htm">channa masala</a></i>, served by local free spirit Gordon W). The sleeve that I tried to read in the dimly-lit loft condensed, </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">within a 12" square, </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">everything that I've come to love about Indian music: Hyper-effusive praise for the author of the recording, the liner notes wrought in fantastically purple prose; kooky graphics, in this instance explaining the multi-dimensionality of the recording you are about to hear; and, of course, a title that may have little or nothing at all to do with the centuries-old stories embedded wordlessly within the ragas comprising <i>The Magnificence Of Stereo</i>. A very good film writer from New York, the <i>Voice</i>'s J. Hoberman, once described the beyond-Busby Berkeley song-and-dance routines of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollywood">Bollywood</a> cinema as "MTV for the very, very stoned." Would that I could summarize the otherworldly character of Bismillah Khan's music, especially today's slice of same, so neatly.<br /><br />I only heard Bismillah Khan in concert once. He appeared at Manhattan's Town Hall during the '80s. He was already very old, that much was evident. I knew within moments of sighting him that this would be his final American tour. He played beautifully, though his jaw muscles and embouchure weren't quite up to the hailstorm of pointillist phrasing that had once been his signature in sound. It didn't matter. I had paid an unholy sum to sit in the back row of the balcony. Around me was India in microcosm: Everyone talked throughout the performance; everyone spoke a different dialect; nearly all of the balcony was involved in varying degrees of dispute, with hissing and scolding galore; babies cried; dinner was being eaten from a multitude of plastic containers </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">(the curries smelled fantastic and drove me to distraction)</span><span style="font-size: 100%;">. The presenters of this event took every opportunity to interrupt the set, laying a funeral home's allotment of flowers on the stage and seizing the mic whenever Bismillah Khan took a break, the better to sing the praises of their organization.<br /><br />None of this, unbelievably, affected my enjoyment of the snowy-haired fellow seated cross-legged at stage center. I was sharing a (huge) room with Bismillah Khan & party and I was so happy.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> I could have heard more of his shehnai, and far less of my neighbors and less of the </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">endlessly tiresome </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">minions of the concern that staged the show and less even of the <i>racktastic</i> hostess from the <i>Namaste America</i> TV show, who introduced Bismillah Khan (yes, even she wore out her welcome in short order). The concert was still the stuff of transport, even with </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">annoyances factored in</span><span style="font-size: 100%;">. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?as_auth=Stanley+Booth&ots=OvBoNL-Pvm&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title">Stanley Booth</a> said it best, describing his own, nearly fatal proximity to the Rolling Stones on their 1969 tour: At least I got to hear the band play.<br /><br />Ustad Bismillah Khan died in 2006. He was extremely old when he died, older than Judy Garland looked when she bought the farm; in his deathbed photographs, he resembled nothing so much as a twig of cardamom nestled within white sheets. His was an enviable lot in many respects. </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">His forebearers played shehnai, and he, in turn, did so too. </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">As the person responsible for elevating his instrument into the classical canon — previously, it had only been deemed appropriate for wedding music and for greeting pilgrims approaching a temple — Bismillah Khan was considered the <i>ne plus ultra</i> of shehnai players throughout his life, never less than innovative and deeply soulful into the bargain. His shadow arched over so many musicians following in his wake. John Coltrane was smitten with his sound, as later were the minimalist composers <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Monte_Young">La Monte Young</a> and <a href="http://www.terryriley.com/">Terry Riley</a>, during their respective spells as saxophonists. </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">Bismillah Khan died </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">where he'd lived his entire life,</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> in Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />Nearly every obituary that I read last year mentioned Bismillah Khan's favorite mode of transportation: a bicycle rickshaw. None of the obituaries that I read last year mentioned the quality that seemed literally as plain as Bismillah Khan's face: the expression that he wore in so many of the photographs taken of him, an expression that telegraphed a degree of wry amusement and perhaps even watchfulness of a worldly sort (those acquainted with the arcana of the Stooges' legend will recognize this as <i><a href="http://blogs.courant.com/roger_catlin_tv_eye/2005/11/why_tv_eye.html">TV Eye</a></i>). He was a musician, after all, and had a small army of grandchildren at the time of his passing, so maybe I'm not simply reading too much into this </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">faintly picaresque aspect of </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">his visage. It wears well on</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> a musician steeped in liturgical repertoire.</span><span style="font-size: 100%;"><a href="http://flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/1397593443/"><img alt="" class="reflect" onload="show_notes_initially();" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1119/1397593569_5240a4dae6.jpg?v=0" style="height: 150px; width: 115px;" /></a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 100%;"><br />Incidentally, the accomplice guiding me towards the Indian meal in Toronto was <a href="http://www.michaelbrookmusic.com/">Michael Brook</a>, the guitarist and producer who, not so much later, was to garner well-deserved renown of </span><span style="font-size: 100%;">his own. (Most recently, Michael scored Sean Penn's newest film <a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0758758/"><i>Into The Wild</i></a>, due in theaters immediately.) Two decades and some down the line from that meal, Michael and his missus Julie recently produced a son, Felix, who thoughtfully turned up on my own birthday (Aug. 27th). This post's for you, Felix.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?32he8si598913bd">THE MAGNIFICENCE OF STEREO</a></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 100%; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/46278568/two_times_mono.zip.html"><br /></a></span>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-51910090280739562532007-01-26T15:20:00.000-08:002008-08-14T21:01:32.486-07:00Gasper Lawal, Ajomasé & Abio'sunni<img src="file:///Users/richardhenderson/Desktop/LP%20COVERS/IMG_0273.JPG" alt="" /><img style="width: 280px; height: 278px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3220/2763789453_916cb5880c.jpg?v=0" alt="IMG_0273 by you." title="" onload="show_notes_initially();" class="reflect" /> <img style="width: 280px; height: 279px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3084/2763789271_acdae4a438.jpg?v=0" alt="IMG_0270 by you." title="" onload="show_notes_initially();" class="reflect" /><br /><br />I’ve been absent from the blogosphere for something like the duration of a comet’s orbit, so today’s post is an effort to make up for lost time. Thus, a pair of records are featured, being the first two solo efforts by expatriate Nigerian drummer Gasper Lawal. Both embody every motive behind my (admittedly sporadic) commitment to this journal:<br /><br />• Neither album has appeared on CD in the quarter-century since their release. “Kita-Kita,” from <span style="font-style: italic;">Ajomasé</span>, turned up on the epoch-marking <a href="http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=10486">Nigeria 70</a> compilation assembled and released by Afro-Strut, a label whose demise I still lament. The combined running times of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ajomasé</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Abio’sunni</span> outdistanced the storage capabilities of the compact disc; it’s doubtful that either title was sufficiently popular to justify re-release in its own right. Fortunately, downloading now renders the timing problem moot.<br /><br />• Both albums are filled to the brim with great playing and terrifically modern ideas (Lawal, with his 1980 debut <span style="font-style: italic;">Ajomasé</span>, might have formulated the Nigerian response to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_%28album%29">Bowie’s & Eno’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Low</span></a>), none of which have dated in the least. Curiously, neither record is mentioned on Gasper Lawal’s <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:tjtxlffe5cqp">page</a> in the All Music Guide.<br /><br />What I know about Gasper Lawal is summarized in this pocket bio, as type-written by <span style="font-style: italic;">Black Music</span> magazine’s Chris May on the reverse side of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Ajomasé</span> lp sleeve:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Gasper-Lawal, African percussionist extraordinary </span>(sic)<span style="font-style: italic;">, is the son of Herbalist Asorono-Akejiwori Lawal. Born in Ijebu-Ode, Nigeria, Gasper came to England in the sixties and gigged with numerous African bands before deciding to involve himself with session work, as a means of expanding his musical horizons. He worked with Ginger Baker’s Airforce, Steve Stills, the Rolling Stones, Funkadelic, Joni Haastrup, Sonny Okosun, Barbra Streisand and many other names before joining Clancy in 1975. In 1977 Gasper returned to Nigeria for a while, returning to England to record ‘AJOMASE’ – which means “we all have to do it together” </span><br /><br />Obviously, Gasper’s curriculum vita is — as <span style="font-style: italic;">AbFab</span>'s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/gallery/ss/0105929/Ss/0105929/3.html?path=gallery&path_key=0105929">Patsy</a> once memorably noted of high colonics – <span style="font-style: italic;">nothing to sniff at</span>. In regard to his work with the Stones, I’ve often wondered if Gasper was among the African drummers at their <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Jones">Hyde Park memorial concert for Brian Jones</a>. One thing I’m certain of is that, in addition to his formidable drumming skills and immaculate taste in accompanists and production technique, Mr. Lawal must possess a sense of humor. I'll offer the Barbra Streisand credit as proof, but will also cite a couple of items not mentioned above. He was part of <a href="http://crudcrud.blogspot.com/">Graham Bond’s Magick</a>, a band assembled for the making of an album in tribute to occultist and pain enthusiast <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleister_Crowley">Aleister Crowley</a>. (For the record, keyboardist Bond – an impulsive sort, best known for his leadership of the <a href="http://www.grahambond.net/">Graham Bond Organization</a> — later tossed himself under a train. The thought lingers that he and producer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Meek">Joe Meek</a> might have made for an interesting twosome at teatime.) Also, Lawal was featured on <a href="http://www.shuttleworths.co.uk/sirhenry/moua.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead</span></a>, the first solo lp from <a href="http://iankitching.me.uk/music/bonzos/">Bonzo Dog Band</a> founder <a href="http://gingergeezer.net/">Vivian Stanshall</a>; regrettably the latter’s credentials as a forward-looking Africanist have been obscured, for the most part, by his eccentricity. Which Viv worked <a href="http://www.comedy-zone.net/standup/comedian/s/stanshall-vivian.htm">overtime</a>.<br /><br />The cast assembled by Lawal for both albums is reason enough to investigate. <a href="http://colinbass.com/static,Home_en.htm">Colin Bass</a>, programmatically named, both creates and steals thunder from multiple layers of Gasper the friendly drummer; like the Velvet Underground’s John Cale before him, one feels compelled to review not just Colin’s bass playing but his very nervous system, so intuitive, inventive and altogether on-the-money are his performances here. Then there is the seven-stringed mi-solo guitar of <a href="http://www.africanmusiciansprofiles.com/abdultj.htm">Abdul ‘Tee-Jay’ Salongo</a>, heard throughout <span style="font-style: italic;">Abio’sunni</span>; the releases from his own group, <a href="http://www.cdroots.com/st-tjwine.html">Rokoto</a>, are enjoyable but don’t approach the galvanizing impact of his playing as you’ll hear today.<br /><br />And so it goes, every track a perfect mesh of English and Nigerian players, the balance between tension and release, synthesizers and tortoise-shell guitars, background and foreground, each so carefully calibrated. Great splashes of echo and reverb, out of Ennio Morricone by way of dub reggae, are integrated with Nigerian rhythms to good effect here. Lawal & co. were exploring this terrain some months in advance of <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/artist/864">Paul ‘Groucho’ Smykle</a>’s engineering for King Sunny Adé’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Juju Music</span>.<br /><br />Gasper Lawal did release a third album in 1995: <span style="font-style: italic;">Kadar,</span> on the <a href="http://www.freakemporium.com/site/list_label.cgi?label=Globestyle">Globestyle</a> imprint, whose A&R director, <a href="http://kartini-music.com/home/3Mustaphas3/?mainm2">3 Mustaphas 3</a> guitarist <a href="http://kartini-music.com/home/3Mustaphas3/Interview/?mainm2u2_2">Ben Mendelson</a>, played violin on <span style="font-style: italic;">Abio’sunni</span>’s “Kai Anibaba.” <span style="font-style: italic;">Kadar </span>featured the same cast of musicians, yet left me entirely unmoved. Still haven’t figured that one out.<br /><br />It’s worth noting that I bought both <span style="font-style: italic;">Ajomasé</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Abio'sunni</span> in what, for all intents and purposes, was a punk record store, <a href="http://www.myspace.com/99Records">99 Records</a> in Manhattan’s Soho neighborhood. Its proprietor, Ed Bahlman, followed his instincts to good effect. His store’s eponymous label released downtown art bands (Y Pants), post-punk (Bush Tetras), the minimalist funk of ESG, reggae (The Congos, as produced by Boris Gardiner of <a href="http://www.discogs.com/artist/Upsetters,+The">The Upsetters</a>, Lee Perry’s house band), and amazing one-offs on the order of journalist Vivian Goldman’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Dirty Washing</span> EP. It seemed then, and still seems appropriate all these many years later, to have acquired Gasper’s DIY albums at <a href="http://www.optimo.co.uk/99.html">99</a>, a haven for adventuresome weirdos.<br /><br />Next up, sooner than later, some unfinished business from 2006: a <span style="font-style: italic;">memento mori</span> for one of my favorite Indian musicians, <a href="http://www.chembur.com/anecdotes/bismillah.htm">Ustad Bismillah Khan</a>, who died last year. Please stay tuned.<br /><br /><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/137429803/GL_1.zip.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">AJOMASÉ (@ 320)</span></a><br /><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://rapidshare.com/files/137432213/GL_2.zip.html">ABIO'SUNNI (@ 320)</a><br /><br />P.S. This particular resurrection of NCIP was motivated in no small measure by the appearance of a like-minded journal, <a href="http://magicofjuju.blogspot.com/">Magic of Juju</a>. Well-chosen, impossibly rare records of diverse temperament presented with care, every one a joy to hear. <span style="font-style: italic;">Good shit, Maynard</span>…indeed.<br /><br />As was obvious to frustrated visitors over the past few months, most of NCIP's Rapidshare links had long ago gone the way of the dodo, owing to inactivity. I’ve re-upped the albums for the entries immediately visible on the right, as well as the <a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_archive.html">King Sunny Adé lp’s</a> (and that of his pedal steel player, <a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_archive.html">Demola Adepoju</a>), and random others. Please notify me, via the comments page, should you desire a particular album link restored, and I’ll respond in kind. Thank you for your patience. I want to buy you all a cup of coffee and some pie, give you all a ride home. For the nonce, however, this will have to suffice.<br /><br />In acknowledgment of the year that stretches before us, I’ll offer a benediction for all NCIP readers and listeners. Here it is, straight from the mouth of the late James Brown, who shook the knuckles from my right hand back in '76 as he barked in my face:<br /><br />“<span style="font-weight: bold;">SON! BE COOL! STAY IN SCHOOL!</span>”<br /><br />(23 years of age at the time, I was reading for a Master’s degree; my parents were prodding me to enter the job market. Couldn’t <span style="font-style: italic;">wait</span> to tell them the news…)count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-1168397854007544182007-01-09T18:40:00.000-08:002008-12-12T09:35:39.720-08:00Pamelo Mounk'a, No.1 Africain (a repost)<img style="width: 280px; height: 274px;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2281/2752705098_6b70ef0ef2.jpg?v=0" alt="IMG_0277 by you." title="" onload="show_notes_initially();" class="reflect" /><br /><br />I began buying Congolese records during 1980. The punk music that had drawn me to New York a few years earlier had succumbed to terminal ennervation, with Kingstonian 'cultural' reggae not far behind it. At the time, an African student dj named Lawrence Nii Nartey was broadcasting on <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/wkcr/">WKCR</a>, Columbia University's radio station in uptown Manhattan; his program, emerging from my bedside radio in Tribeca, had a galvanizing effect on this little honkie. He played all the greats: Franco & OK Jazz, Tabu Ley Rochereau, Kabassele, Dr. Nico <em>et al</em>. The songs were so good, each one fully as sensuous - to invoke again a metaphor that has resurfaced more than once in my writing - as the flick of a sperm cell's tail. I didn't want them to stop. They didn't. The novelty of these extended dance tunes was such that if I found an album from Zaire containing four songs, it would be deemed good enough and I would buy it without question. Of course, nothing was or is that simple. This practice had me buying a lot of mediocre music in the course of pilgrimages to Brooklyn's African Record Centre. I did manage, however, to divine a simple, immutable truth while early in the thrall of listening to Pamelo Mounk'a: If a woman's name ended in "a," chances were Pamelo could spin a deathless tune in homage to her.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">No.1 Africain</span>, Pamelo's third solo album helmed by producer <a href="http://www.muzikifan.com/desert.html">Eddy Gustave</a>, is offered herewith as proof. "Tamara, Ndjeu Nkasi A Me" and "Nourama" comprise the B side of this disc, both tunes sporting the earmarks of great <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soukous"><span style="font-style: italic;">soukous</span></a> music: the horn section jabbing and feigning like a prize fighter; multiple guitar interplay that obliterates the line between rhythm and lead roles, as with the Rolling Stones' best London singles from the mid-'60s; and that genuinely pregnant pause when, after a couple of verses sung to a languid 3+2 Afro-Cuban tattoo, the band shifts into high gear for the extended vamps known as the <span style="font-style: italic;">seben</span>, which form the lion's share of a given song. I live for the seben, when drummer Domingo Salsero plays four-to-the-floor, driving the band towards the horizon without obstacles in sight, red-lining in fifth gear all the while. Master Mwana Congo gets off some rude asides on his guitar, the backing vocalist offers props off-mic to the gentlemen of the orchestra. From this, something like genuine trance music materializes.<br /><br />What's more, Pamelo's root inspiration holds water when soaked overnight. Every woman I've ever met (well, there's a lone exception, whom I'll gladly ignore for the nonce) whose given name ended in the letter "a" has become a luminous, valued presence in my life. Pamelo Mounk'a offers a gallery of these alluring creatures throughout his discography: <span style="font-style: italic;">Selimandja</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Nora</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Camitina</span> and the penultimate, his 'tresor Hindou,' <span style="font-style: italic;">Samantha</span>, whom we'll meet in a later post. What a guy! What a life! What a cream-colored suit! More's the pity, then, that Pamelo and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/26/britain.palmer/index.html">the late Robert Palmer</a> never met, as both were boulevardiers setting an admirably louche example for the rest of us.<br /><br /><img style="width: 280px; height: 277px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3010/2751871607_d39cdcf5a5.jpg?v=0" alt="IMG_0278 by you." title="" onload="show_notes_initially();" class="reflect" /><br /><br />One more of Monsieur Mounk'a's solo efforts will appear next, being the first chapter of his solo career prior to working <span style="font-style: italic;">avec Eddy</span>. Beyond that, other soukous discs will be offered as iterations of my soundtrack for warm weather, <a href="http://www.itequila.org/besttequilas.htm">Arette Gran Clase</a> tequila, buttery women and hedonism in all desirous forms. Then, in a while, the twin peaks of Pamelo's canon, <a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/2006/07/pamelo-mounka-pamelo-mounka.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Pamelo Mounk'a</span></a> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Samantha</span>. Please stay tuned.<br /><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/128005723/FIRST_AFRICAN.zip.html"><br /></a><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/172757671/PMNUMEROUNO.zip">NO. 1 AFRICAIN (@ 160) </a>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-1154417967543723002006-07-31T23:46:00.000-07:002013-10-09T14:42:47.003-07:00Pamelo Mounk'a, Pamelo Mounk'a<img alt="IMG_0301 by you." class="reflect" onload="show_notes_initially();" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3157/2754875125_89aee7a2f8.jpg?v=0" style="height: 280px; width: 280px;" title="" /><br />
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It is possible to get lucky in this life. There are no guarantees, of course, but every now and then one is afforded a first great experience, to which one's imagination will return time and again. If you're sufficiently awake at the time, you'll notice these moments. Noticing, that's the lucky bit.<br />
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Let's imagine that you grew up in a bell jar, or under a rock, or in <a href="http://www.houston-home-buyers.com/we_buy_run_down_houses.htm">Houston</a>. You walk into a cinema for the first time in your life and by weird chance your first experience of film is Carol Reed's 1947 feature, <a href="http://www.filmsite.org/thir.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Third Man</span></a>. Or imagine a friend describing the thicket of non sequitur that is dub reggae, and then being smart enough to put Augustus Pablo's <a href="http://www.discogs.com/release/184755"><span style="font-style: italic;">King Tubby Meets The Rockers Uptown</span></a> on the turntable. (We're assuming that your friend is a really good friend, and as such has already made a successful sales pitch for <a href="http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/2407.html">herb</a>.) Or imagine yourself bored and sleepy in a campus library, unfamiliar with the quicksilver magic possible within a short story, as you happen upon <a href="http://www.murakami.ch/main_3.html">Haruki Murakami</a>'s "<a href="http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/after_quake/">Super-Frog Saves Tokyo</a>." In these moments, as <a href="http://www.terrapin.co.uk/xrayspex/">Poly Styrene</a> sang thousands of years ago, <span style="font-style: italic;">the world turns day-glo</span>.<br />
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Or, so long as we're conjuring, imagine that you are young and green and so chronically distracted as to have your friends suspecting <a href="http://www.udel.edu/bkirby/asperger/">Asperger's Syndrome</a> at work and you are stuck in a cab buried in the morass of lower Manhattan traffic during, for the needs of this hypothesis, 1982. Your driver, a Nigerian, has his radio tuned to <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/wkcr/">WKCR</a>, Columbia University's radio station beaming across 110th Street. He listens to WKCR because it is there that an African dj, <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/~lnn3/">Lawrence Nii Nartey</a>, holds <a href="http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/wkcr/content/african-show">court on Thursday evenings</a> (and, thankfully, still does in the present day). Lawrence plays all stripes of African pop music, but on this evening he dotes upon the Latinate hybrid that in time you, the pasty little downtowner sitting stunned in the back of the cab, will come to know as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soukous"><span style="font-style: italic;">soukous</span></a>. Lawrence's show makes driving a non-medallion cab bearable for a fellow West African expat, especially on hot days. This particular day is, of course, very hot.<br />
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It is then that you, the pale neurasthenic slumped in the back seat, suddenly sit up and take notice. The cab's interior and, for that matter, the adjacent lanes of 7th Avenue seem at once filled with electric guitars, so very many of them, slyly grinding against one another. When you first took notice of the song, it struck you as old-timey, pinned to a mid-tempo rhythm of curiously Hispanic tint (rumba? mambo?). Then, after a pause that could have delivered twins, the band switched up to something like mid-'70s disco. The thump of four-on-the floor kick drum now seems unstoppable. The hi-hat cymbal races ahead of the beat, then pulls back. This dynamic will repeat again and again and then some more. Yes, this feels like disco, but it's so much sexier, and you don't need <a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/BLACK-Quaalude-T-Shirt-Rorer-714-Vintage-Punk-Emo-MED_W0QQitemZ180011179634QQihZ008QQcategoryZ118991QQcmdZViewItem">714</a>'s to appreciate it!<br />
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You can't understand the singer, but you are pulled in immediately, as he seems charming and possessed of good humor. His voice is double-tracked, so the recording feels modern; there's something you hadn't expected, modernity, from an African record. The singer parses each line of his lyrics as though savoring <a href="http://www.theworldwidegourmet.com/fish/caviar/tobiko.htm">tobiko</a>, egg by egg, his diction on par with <a href="http://www.angelfire.com/ny/blossomdearie/">Blossom Dearie</a>. His is the song of a happy man, yet in the same breath he sounds tethered to a melancholy past. You begin to think that maybe this is the equivalent in song to <a href="http://www.library.uiuc.edu/kolbp/proust.html">Proust</a> sampling a fresh madeleine.<br />
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In the space of not so many moments, you feel you've made a very real connection with someone you haven't met. When you get home, you waste money that you don't have sitting at curbside in this cab until Lawrence Nii Nartey back-announces his set. (Years later, <a href="http://www.npr.org/">NPR</a> will label this a <a href="http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/driveway/about/"><span style="font-style: italic;">driveway moment</span></a>, but as it is still 1982, you're parked on the cobblestones of Chambers Street. The twin towers of the World Trade Center loom nearby. At the end of your block is a sand dune that soon will sprout the apartment buildings of Battery Park City.) The cab's meter ticks onward. The cabbie laughs like a drain. The little honkie in his back seat learned something this evening, something the cabbie has known for some time now. On the radio, finally, Lawrence Nii Nartey tells you that you have fallen hard for a guy from Brazzaville named Pamelo Mounk'a. His song has been a huge hit both in Francophone Africa and in France itself. It is titled "L'Argent Appelle L'Argent."<br />
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As this journal began, so now shall it continue, inspired once more by the deathless voice of <a href="http://www.brainyhistory.com/events/1945/may_10_1945_105773.html">Pamelo Mounk'a</a>. A quarter-century's reflection hasn't altered my opinion a whit: Pamelo remains as good as they come in Congolese music, probably better. His singing never felt less than entirely natural and alive. Though Pamelo Mounk'a could nuance a given phrase — or, indeed, a syllable within that phrase — with surgical precision, on the whole his delivery was modest and sincere, as simple as saying hello. As much could be said for each of his band members, their every move redolent with grace, sensuality and cunning. The lead guitar — though the distinction between lead and rhythm guitar in Congolese pop may not mean much beyond treble content — was the signature work of Ignace Inkounkou, a guy who merited his own fan club when billed as <a href="http://afropop.org/forums/read.php?f=1&i=915&t=915">Master Mwana Congo</a>. He played impudent and sly like Teeny Hodges, the guitarist from Memphis producer Willie Mitchell's house band, though it is doubtful that Hodges spent much time doting on the memory of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%C3%83%C2%ADo_Matamoros">Trio Matamoros</a> while backing Al Green. On mi-solo guitar, <a href="http://www.musicweb-international.com/encyclopaedia/p/P1.HTM">Pablo Lubadika Porthos</a> showed promise that would reap dividends mere months later with <a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/2005/09/pablo-lubadika-porthos-en-action.html">his own solo album</a>. <a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_permanentcondition_archive.html">Domingo Salsero</a> ranks alongside Janne Haavisto (<a href="http://www.laikaandthecosmonauts.com/">Laika & the Cosmonauts</a>) and the soul of motorik rhythm, Germany's <a href="http://thegoldblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/jaki-leibzeit-drum-clinic.html">Jaki Leibzeit</a>, in the pantheon of tireless minimalist drummers. Domingo had the smarts to strain the hysteria from uptown Manhattan salsa, while always keeping in mind the rudiments of <a href="http://www.topicrecords.co.uk/acatalog/index2.html">post-war Cuban music</a>.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">Pamelo Mounk'a</span> was the first of the singer's winning streak of albums overseen by <a href="http://www.africambiance.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=863">Eddy Gustave</a>. The producer had left his native Guadeloupe, in the French West Indies, moving to Paris in 1960. A jazz enthusiast, he took up saxophone; Gustave's solos are heard throughout the mature work of Pamelo Mounk'a. It is curious, though, this modernist Caribbean edge imparted by Gustave's studio technique and arrangements. Clearly, these elements gave Pamelo Mounk'a a leg up on his fellow Congolese singers, yet the same elements foreshadowed the absorption and dismantling of soukous later in the '80s by the Antillean form known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zouk">zouk</a>, a musical genre originating in the same part of the Caribbean as Eddy Gustave.<br />
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Just when most had judged it down for the count (I'll offer gratitude to the encouragement of hopeful correspondents), <span style="font-style: italic;">No Condition Is Permanent</span> lives up to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pataphysics">pataphysical</a> promise implicit in its title. My little journal has been revived by this torpid, vaporous summer, returning to provide virtual refreshment, reminding you that very, very warm weather requires a new pair of <a href="http://martialmart.com/strawzori.html">tatami-mat sandals</a> and a kitchen cupboard stocked with appropriate <a href="http://www.ayahuasca.com/">snacks</a> and fluids. To the latter, I will recommend <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pimms_Cup">Pimm's No. 1</a> in the proscribed admixture; as with the books of <a href="http://www.smart.net/%7Etak/wodehouse.html">Wodehouse</a>, the <a href="http://www.drinksmixer.com/drink7012.html">Pimm's Cup</a> must be experienced above 72º and will only send you fast asleep in cooler temperatures. Closer to the crux of the seasonal biscuit is <a href="http://www.allthingsagave.com/shop/index.php/action/category/id/1/">Arette Blanco Suave</a>, being both necessary and nothing less than the apogee of <a href="http://www.tequilaaficionado.com/">Vitamin T</a> when humidity of monsoon quality prevails.<br />
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As hedonist chums are prone to turning up unexpectedly in the sticky season, the sounds of equatorial musicians remain a must for entertaining when the mercury climbs. While you can, rethink your morality (or at very least discard the troubling bits), open the windows, annoy the neighbors, plug in <a href="http://www.canorml.org/healthfacts/vaporizerstudy2.html">The Volcano</a>, and [cue: voice of <a href="http://www.vivarchive.org.uk/">Vivian Stanshall</a>] <span style="font-style: italic;">think on't and begin again…</span><br />
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<a href="http://www26.zippyshare.com/v/58163584/file.html">PAMELO MOUNK'A</a>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-1139385912610250102006-02-07T23:34:00.000-08:002009-10-14T00:02:45.177-07:00Lijadu Sisters, Double Trouble<img style="width: 282px; height: 283px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3271/2751819381_55ec269766.jpg?v=0" alt="IMG_0267 by you." title="" onload="show_notes_initially();" class="reflect" /><br /><br />There is much to love about the Lijadu Sisters, identical twins of entirely self-determined nature who sing like birds, albeit carnivorous birds with roomy lungs. The sisters raised a brood of four kids, none of whom allegedly knew which Lijadu sister, either Kehinde or Taiwo, was their respective mom. The Lijadu Sisters seemed to be well in control of their professional destiny and critical of the colonial mentality that pervaded Nigerian record companies. They also had little patience for the male chauvinism that was seemingly part of the furniture in their native Nigeria.<br /><br />The Lijadu Sisters also featured in one of my favorite music documentaries, <a href="http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/vr/marre-49.php"><span style="font-style: italic;">Konkombé</span></a>. The work of English director <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0550096/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnxteD0yMHxsbT01MDB8ZmI9dXxwbj0wfHE9amVyZW15IG1hcnJlfGh0bWw9MXxubT0x;fc=1;ft=20">Jeremy Marre</a>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Konkombé</span> was the Nigerian installment in his 14-episode world music series, <a href="http://www.shanachie.com/artist/videos/beats.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">Beats of the Heart</span></a>, which ran often on PBS during the late '80s. The three chapters concerning the black diaspora (Jamaica, South Africa and Nigeria) held the best blend of musical, political and cultural content, and of this trio <span style="font-style: italic;">Konkombé</span> was beyond fabulous. It was loaded stem to stern with great performances, fascinating archival footage, revealing interviews and near-palpable neighborhood funk. (With much of the last; speaking at New York's Museum of Natural History, Marre described the horrors — corpses left in front yards —routinely encountered during his Nigerian shoot.)<br /><br />The Lijadus are seen taking care of their kids and rehearsing in the side yard of their house. Without much accompaniment beyond a couple of talking drums and acoustic guitar, the sisters sing in unison, laid-back and vibrantly erotic in the same breath: "If you want to…you can <span style="font-style: italic;">touch</span> me." Then the camera invades a session with the Lijadu Sisters at the cramped, over-heated Lagos recording studio run by their record company, Decca West Africa. The same song is being recorded, but feels rushed, not nearly the wonderfully loose-limbed affair heard a few minutes previous. Aside from coping with their crumby work environment, the sisters do battle with their overbearing producer (a Nigerian version of the evil producer portrayed so well by Lou Reed in Paul Simon's otherwise regrettable film, <span style="font-style: italic;">One Trick Pony</span>). It's a wonder Kehinde and Taiwo got anything done at all, much less music of the quality heard on today's download.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Double Trouble</span>, released in the U.S. by the Shanachie label in 1984, compiled tracks from then-recent albums (<a href="http://bywayof.net/captains_crate/archives/2005/02/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Danger</span></a>, <a href="http://www.naijajams.com/category/music/juju/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Horizon Unlimited</span></a>) by the sisters. Though obviously working in the same climate that gave rise to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrobeat">Afrobeat</a>, being the great invention of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and drummer Tony Allen, the Lijadu twins drew additional rhythmic inspiration from reggae and West African high life.<br /><br />The last I had heard of the Lijadus, both sisters had moved to Brooklyn, possibly in the late '80s. They played some dates at <a href="http://www.nyrock.com/worldbeat/07_2001/073001b.asp">Wetlands</a>, the lower Manhattan club-as-Petri-dish partially responsible for culturing the jam band plague. They also did a gig in Harlem, with King Sunny Adé's African Beats as their backing band; first on the bill was <a href="http://humanities.sas.upenn.edu/04-05/event_thompson.html">Robert Farris Thompson</a>, noted Africanist and author of a genuinely deathless work, <a href="http://www.webarchaeology.com/html/flashof.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy</span></a>.<br /><br /><img src="http://static.flickr.com/21/97074482_4879b818ff.jpg?v=0" alt="" onload="show_notes_initially()" height="108" width="216" /><br /><br />Unfortunately, that's the last I'd heard of them. It would be a dreadful shame if their fate mirrored that of another great African singer, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebe_Manga">Bebe Manga</a>. The latter's epic "Amie-o" has been revived of late on the <a href="http://www.sternsmusic.com/disk_info.php?id=27677"><span style="font-style: italic;">Golden Afrique Vol. 1</span></a> compilation, yet Bebe Manga's career seemed to end with her own move to Brooklyn. Much as I loathe Bob Dylan, I am reminded of his line about pitying immigrants who wished that they'd stayed home. Hopefully, the Lijadu Sisters are still up to something good.<br /><br /><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/292780037/twindifficulty.zip">DOUBLE TROUBLE</a><br /><br />It never fails to amaze me, but there are humans — sentient types with driver's licenses and all, individuals presumably capable of dressing up and going places — who still have not twigged to the fact that there is music to be had from this site. So, with the consummate subtlety of a flying anvil, I will list the following and remind all concerned to check out the final link always, as encoded in the album title at the end of each entry. And there are new entries planned for the near future, "If we are spared," as my Scottish grandmother used to say. Oh, my grandmother, fun at parties…<br /><br /><a href="http://rapidshare.de/files/12280771/HACHEW.zip.html"><br /></a><a href="http://rapidshare.de/files/12723204/AfroMidi.zip.html"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></a>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-1134418462141561372005-12-12T12:05:00.001-08:002013-10-09T15:02:07.398-07:00Orchestra Super Mazembe, Kaivaska<img alt="ORCHSUPMAZfrnt by you." class="reflect" onload="show_notes_initially();" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3109/2751804607_89475b66b0.jpg?v=0" style="height: 255px; width: 258px;" title="" /><br />
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<a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:ia98s38ba3pg%7ET1">Joe Boyd</a>, the American expatriate record producer, was once asked why contemporary English folk music — many of the best examples of which were produced by Joe Boyd — didn't resonate with most American record buyers. In response, he cited the African origins of most American pop music, and described music based in African idioms as 'a passport to fun.' By that consideration, your average Fairport Convention album might as well exist on a different planet than the one hosting either Africa or today's subject, <span style="font-style: italic;">Kaivaska</span>.<br />
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Orchestra Super Mazembe reissue the passport to fun with each spin of <span style="font-style: italic;">Kaivaska</span>, their 1982 album released in the U.K. by Virgin Records. The nine songs comprising <span style="font-style: italic;">Kaivaska</span> are of consistent quality, energizing and vibrant. Collectively, they commemorate an African dance band at the top of its form connecting with the recording studio. Which hardly ever happens.<br />
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A friend (of Danish decent, so she <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> meant it) once described Orchestra Super Mazembe as "the happiest band in the word." Its membership might argue otherwise, as they weathered much of the grief routinely visited upon working musicians in Africa. Orchestra Super Mazembe — the latter portion of its name an homage to earth-moving equipment — relocated to Eastern Africa, specifically Nairobi, to establish itself at a remove from the highly competitive scene in its native Zaîre. Earlier on, the band had its instruments repossessed by its first patron immediately prior to crossing the Zambian border; fortunately, the club owner in Zambia owned gear they could use. Subsequent morbidity and mortality influenced Super Mazembe's shifting membership. By the mid-'80s, the group was effectively out of the running.<br />
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Factoring in these career speedbumps, my friend's words hold true. There probably isn't music much happier sounding than that played by Orchestra Super Mazembe. As one might expect of Congolese natives, Super Mazembe dealt in Congolese rumba (or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soukous" style="font-style: italic;">soukous</a>), the Latinate sound that still remains the Congo Republic's great contribution to music, one that could be described as salsa with the hysteria filtered out. Super Mazembe augmented their rumba template with elements of the local music in their adopted home, Kenyan <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benga"><span style="font-style: italic;">benga.</span></a> They weren't the first or the last band to do so, but may have been the best at it. Ultimately, theirs was indisputably an African music, with contours somewhat more linear than its Afro-Cuban antecedents, yet every bit as sensual.<br />
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Those readers interested in the greater history of Orchestra Super Mazembe should investigate <a href="http://www.sternsmusic.com/disk_info/STEW45CD"><span style="font-style: italic;">Giants Of East Africa</span></a>, a career-spanning overview of the band's music from the mid-'70s through the subsequent decade, as issued on a compact disc a few years ago by the Earthworks label. <a href="http://www.airecords-africa.com/docs/albumnew.htm">Trevor Herman's liner notes</a> for this collection are the defining historical account this splendid band deserves. Even as he recounts their success on the hotel and agricultural fair circuit — really — Herman observes that Super Mazembe's timing for success outside of East Africa could have been better. The band peaked in the era of <span style="font-style: italic;">Kaivaska</span>'s release, then disintegrated shortly thereafter, a few years in advance of the coming world music boomlet.<br />
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Herman also makes note of one of the band's best performances, "Maloba D'Amour," being their cover of Buddy Holly's "Words of Love." The song is not included on <span style="font-style: italic;">Giants Of East Africa</span>, which I find curious as it clearly was the centerpiece of <span style="font-style: italic;">Kaivaska</span>, despite its being tucked away on the second side of the original vinyl disc. Anyone within my acquaintance who has heard <span style="font-style: italic;">Kaivaska</span> remembers "Maloba D'Amour" with much fondness. The song is a holographic shard with hooks, one that enables both a view of the band's history and the extraordinary potential of its membership. More importantly, the song embodies — and then some — the fun alluded to by Joe Boyd. A solo guitar rephrases Holly's trademark hook with a borrowed Spanish accent. Drums and grouped voices slam in to a groove that, as was said of early singles by the Kinks, could be the sound of musicians running the four minute mile. Or jogging the four minute mile with spliff in hand, as I'd prefer to imagine Super Mazembe. The horn section blazes with authority, and the rolling groove seems altogether unstoppable. "Maloba…" ends with an out-chorus repeatedly hummed by the singers. I can think of only one other example of humming used to such great effect, by another group named after a bulldozer(!), <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:0ev1z82ajyvn%7ET1">Buffalo Springfield</a>. (The latter's song, "Merry-Go-Round," was included on their third and final full-length, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:1ztqoarabijr"><span style="font-style: italic;">Last Time Around</span></a>; Richie Furay sings lead, but Stephen Stills' timbre is unmistakable even when humming.)<br />
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Next on deck, the hottest identical twins ever to cut an album in Nigeria. Please stay tuned.<br />
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<a href="http://www26.zippyshare.com/v/55351311/file.html">KAIVASKA</a>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-1131512828369819122005-11-08T20:54:00.000-08:002008-08-10T22:29:59.157-07:00'Reebop' Kwaku Baah & Ganoua, Trance<img style="width: 281px; height: 286px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3082/2751847937_b6cb242343.jpg?v=0" alt="TRANCEfrnt by you." title="" onload="show_notes_initially();" class="reflect" /><br /><br />Here is an album that bridges English avant-pop music and something approaching ethnomusicology. It is also an artifact of a now-distant time, when hippies with an intellectual bent could pilot Land Rovers around Africa looking for both new sounds and a proprietary buzz to go with the music they'd discovered.<br /><br />Steve Winwood plugged an important component into the second iteration of his group Traffic as the '70s began: a Ghanaian percussionist he found in Sweden, Anthony 'Reebop' Kwaku Baah. A merciless conga player, a good cook by all reports, most certainly an all-stops-out hedonist, Reebop made the front line of Traffic much fun to experience in the glam '70s, an era captioned by Traffic's <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:asw67ui0h0j0"><span style="font-style: italic;">Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys</span></a>. He countered the band's innate tendency to experiment in concert and so meander; I will borrow Brian Eno's phrase and describe Reebop as Traffic's <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:3d67gjwrj6ic"><span style="font-style: italic;">direct-inject anti-jazz ray gun</span></a>. Reebop was also, to reiterate, a hedonist. By the time Traffic wound to a halt in mid-decade, as Winwood recalled, "[Reebop] was so out of it, he insisted on singing during every song." The band gave Reebop an unplugged microphone.<br /><br />After Traffic, Reebop joined the German avant-garde group Can for <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:18j4eae04xk7">the one album</a> (without Can founder Holger Czukay) that Can enthusiasts still avoid discussing. However, <a href="http://zerlett.de/english/masdruck.htm">"Masimbabele,"</a> a fantastic single recorded with two Cologne musicians calling themselves The Unknown Cases, turned up on the Rough Trade label in the early '80s. Reebop takes the lead vocal on this record and his singing comes off, surprisingly, as likeable. "Masimbabele" was later issued as part of <span style="font-style: italic;">WOMAD Talking Book Vol. Two: An Introduction To Africa</span>. Reebop died in 1983, probably from the condition author Eve Babitz identified as <span style="font-style: italic;">over-boogie</span>. Reebop had also worked on a solo project, unfinished at the time of his death.<br /><br />In between his stints with Traffic and Can, Reebop Kwaku Baah entered into collaboration with musicians from <a href="http://geoimages.berkeley.edu/GeoImages/Miller/market7.html">the Ganoua</a> (or G'noua), a mystical sect resident in North Africa whose roots may be traced across the Muslim diaspora to the Sudan. The album resulting from that collaboration, <span style="font-style: italic;">Trance</span>, bookmarks the waning moments of an era when a pop record label of significance (in this case, Island Records) could issue foreign language songs played jointly by an African drummer and some hill people from Morocco.<br /><br />The project was conceived and brought to fruition by Mim Scala, one of the<a href="http://pdngallery.com/legends/bailey/gallery.shtml"> 1200 or so humans</a> who actually got to live the <a href="http://language.home.sprynet.com/otherdex/60seng-1.htm">'Swinging London'</a> lifestyle during the mid-'60s. Scala had been a manager and agent and record company A&R, had socialized with artists and pop stars and gangsters (as one does); a high diver of the low life, Scala specialized in being wherever one was supposed to be in the halcyon days of rock stardom. <a href="http://smironne.free.fr/NICO/nicofind.html">Brian Jones</a> of the Rolling Stones was a friend (comparisons between Scala and Stones manager <a href="http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=xD67GWVCyR&isbn=0312266537&itm=5">Andrew Loog Oldham</a> are inevitable). Having returned from Morocco with tapes of <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:ozkku3ugan6k%7ET1">the Master Musicians of Jajouka</a>, Jones confided to Scala that music from other mystical sects lurked elsewhere in the Atlas Mountains. Subsequently, Jones died in 1969. His much-remixed tapes would eventually surface as <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:wjjc7i3jg76r">the first release on Rolling Stones Records</a> some three years on. In '69, Mim Scala ducked out of <a href="http://corky.net/scripts/withnail.html">a London coming down from its high</a> and hit the pot trail. What followed remains the stuff of hoary cliché: the Land Rover, the spiritual quest, the exotic girlfriend, the antipodal terrain, the fabulous dope, the amazing connections...<br /><br />The notion of recording ritual music in Morocco stayed with Mim Scala. In 1975 Scala, then a shaggy itinerant but ever the scenemaker, coordinated a recording date in Tangiers involving both <a href="http://www.mimscala.co.uk/Ganoua2.html">Reebop and a select group of Ganoua musicians</a>. Several <a href="http://www.mimscala.co.uk/Bgallery1.html">photos documenting the occasion</a> may be found on <a href="http://www.mimscala.co.uk/">Scala's cob-website</a>, including <a href="http://www.mimscala.co.uk/Mv.html">one framing a topless blonde lady of fairly happening mien</a> traversing the sand dunes next to Mim. He seems oblivious to her presence. Priorities being what they were back in the day, Mim is carefully toting his hookah to the next tent.<br /><br />The sessions comprising <span style="font-style: italic;">Trance</span>, like Brian Jones' recordings from Jajouka, were initially made on a four-track tape machine (Jones used a Uher; Scala, six years later, employed a Teac) then mixed to stereo in a London studio. The results were not overtly psychedelic, as with the phase-shifting and non-linear audio content of the album produced by Jones and engineer <a href="http://www.timeisonourside.com/whydontAD.html#GEORGE%20chkiantz">George Chkiantz</a>. Still, <span style="font-style: italic;">Trance</span> exudes its own druggy miasma. Those listeners with a past, as I'll euphemize, will probably experience sympathetic cottonmouth by the end of the title track, which spanned one side of the original vinyl pressing. The album whose sound best compares with today's offering — a signature laminate of moist reverb, off-mic incantations and other artifacts of reoriented consciousness —is probably <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:wzadqj4bojta"><span style="font-style: italic;">Gris-Gris</span></a>, the 1968 debut Atco label lp by Dr. John the Night Tripper. Though Dr. John had been a session player for <a href="http://www.palacefamilysteakhouse.com/2005/05/crushed.html">Phil Spector</a>, the New Orleans pianist's entrée into making records for hippies sounded like an arcane rite conducted in a graveyard…after a flood. He, too, knew the meaning of value added entertainment.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Trance</span>, like <span style="font-style: italic;">Gris-Gris</span>, is equal parts smoke and rising damp, music as chimera. The congas telegraph their presence seemingly several feet down a tiled hallway. Chants kick-start, then fade into rhythmic mumbling. Most of the album's five songs peg their mysteries to the buzzing <a href="http://learningobjects.wesleyan.edu/vim/cgi-bin/instrument.cgi?id=22"><span style="font-style: italic;">gimbri</span></a>, an acoustic bass guitar made from wood and leather, with metal resonators, that forms the melodic spine of <span style="font-style: italic;">Trance</span>. Every one of these tracks is charged with subdued intensity, which in turn gives way to naked intensity.<br /><br /><img style="width: 280px; height: 278px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3199/2751848123_6c4ac87cc8.jpg?v=0" alt="TRANCEbk by you." title="" onload="show_notes_initially();" class="reflect" /><br /><br />In his notes, Mim Scala offers "The album <span style="font-style: italic;">Trance</span> is the music of a separate reality. I hope to see you there." There may be no 'there' there anymore, not as Mim might have experienced it then, not in today's world. There is, however, a near-tangible reminder of Mim's 'there' in each fuzzy note and conga pop of <span style="font-style: italic;">Trance</span>. He did get that much right and as such is owed a debt of gratitude by the proprietor of <span style="font-style: italic;">NCIP</span> and its readership. Messages and potent imagery are embedded in this music. The Ganoua believe that music can have external meaning. This notion embarasses ethnomusicologists, but doesn't trouble the musicians. They believe that the <a href="http://learningobjects.wesleyan.edu/vim/cgi-bin/instrument.cgi?id=22"><span style="font-style: italic;">gimbri</span></a> speaks to them, and to the spirits surrounding them. Appropriately, <span style="font-style: italic;">Trance</span> can trigger synesthesia, even at a remove in time. Listen closely and you may smell hash oil, kif smoke, roasting goat meat, estrogen, sweat and the vapors of petrol leaking from <a href="http://www.mimscala.co.uk/Crash1.html">a crashed Land Rover</a>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Trance</span> mesmerizes as great liturgical music should, even as it stains the air with a palpable sense of loss and evanesence. Writing in his best collection of short stories, <span style="font-style: italic;">Jesus' Son</span>, author and fifth-gear hedonist Denis Johnson nailed the feeling with a scant few words:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">That world! These days it's all been erased and they've rolled it up like a scroll and put it away somewhere. Yes, I can touch it with my fingers. But where is it?</span><br /><br /><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/11024416/MESMERIZE.zip.html">TRANCE</a>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-1129537165725860792005-10-17T01:07:00.000-07:002008-07-07T18:21:43.598-07:00Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey & His Inter-Reformers Band, Joy Of Salvation<img src="http://static.flickr.com/28/53314270_7075f3fbea.jpg?v=0" alt="" onload="show_notes_initially()" height="108" width="216" /><br />The late <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Plimpton">George Plimpton</a>, consummate boulevardier and enthusiast-without-boundary, enjoyed fireworks as have few others. His 1984 book, <a href="http://www.alibris.com/search/search.cfm?qwork=2334419&wauth=Plimpton%2C%20George&matches=16&qsort=r&cm_re=works*listing*title"><span style="font-style: italic;">Fireworks, A History and Celebration</span></a>, is still considered the defining tome on the subject. Late in his career, Plimpton was appointed Commissioner of Fireworks for New York City, a position created especially for the 6' 4", plummy-voiced polymath. "They're wonderful, fireworks," Plimpton once told Michiko Kakutani of <span style="font-style: italic;">The</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span>, "You set fire to a fuse and there, suddenly, is everything a writer or artist wants to do. The crowd cheers and the sky lights up — you've elicited an immediate reaction."<br /><br />Much as I doubt that Plimpton, editor of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Paris Review</span>, occasional advertising pitchman and one-time Detroit Lion, had any significant encounters with African pop music, I wouldn't put money against it. George Plimpton could be counted upon to turn up wherever it was assumed that he wouldn't. Had the man whom John Wayne insisted on calling "Plankton" actually heard Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey and His Inter-Reformers Band, he might have recognized the incendiary energy common to both roman candles and the Nigerian approach to pedal steel guitar.<br /><br />Whether Ebenezer Obey or<a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/2005/07/king-sunny-ad-his-african-beats-ajoo.html"> King Sunny Adé</a> was the great innovator of <a href="http://www.afropop.org/explore/style_info/ID/18/Juju/">juju</a> is possibly still open to debate. Obey certainly was in the game a few years earlier than Adé, and was a guiding force behind the minting of a genuinely Nigerian pop music; in the early '60s, highlife rhythms imported from neighboring Ghana still ruled local dance floors. Obey formed his first group, the International Brothers, in 1964. That group became the Inter-Reformers Band by 1970. By that point Obey & Co. were in the habit of completing <a href="http://biochem.chem.nagoya-u.ac.jp/%7Eendo/EAObey.html">four or more albums</a> per annum.<br /><br />Ebenezer Obey never found the connection to Western audiences enjoyed briefly by his rival, King Sunny Adé. In the first throes of enthusiasm for all things African as the '70s ended, Obey was signed by Virgin Records (as always, the Avis to Island Records' Hertz, Sunny Adé already having been signed to Island) but little came of it. Still, Obey enjoyed huge sales in Nigeria and has maintained a <a href="http://biochem.chem.nagoya-u.ac.jp/%7Eendo/EAObey.html">consistently prolfic output</a> down the years. Having recounted as much, I'll admit that <span style="font-style: italic;">Joy of Salvation</span> is the only one of his albums to have engaged me on par with my affection for any number of Sunny Adé's long-players.<br /><br />[An editorial aside: The notion of spiritual absolutism in any form is anathema to this sensible hedonist, yet I am willing to allow for Chief Commander Obey's lyrical obsession with morality, honesty and the principal characters of the Bible because (1) his music brims with pagan vitality seemingly at odds with its ecclesiastical text and (2) he's singing in Yoruba, which makes it that much easier for me to ignore whatever deity-dedicated message he's putting across.]<br /><br />About ten years ago, Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey and his 18-strong Inter-Reformers Band arrived in Los Angeles for a rare concert appearance. This event was marred from the get-go by the worst concert sound I'd encountered up to that point in time, or since for that matter. Horrendously loud and distorted in equal measure, Obey's P.A. drove the entire audience — even the African expat crowd — outdoors to the theater's patio. The Inter-Reformers almost sounded good when heard <span style="font-style: italic;">outside</span> the building. I'd sneak back into the hall at intervals, where I'd spy a well-known DJ, a local <span style="font-style: italic;">eminence gris</span> of world music, gamely grooving by himself in the near-empty hall. Even as I marveled at his perseverance, it seemed all too likely that the upper range of his hearing could vanish then and there. For my part, to paraphrase <a href="http://www.donmarquis.com/archy/index.html">Don Marquis' Archy the cockroach</a>, I'll take half the volume and twice the longevity as regards my own perception of treble frequencies. And so I retreated once more to the patio, there to ogle the solidly constructed <a href="http://www.kanyinsola.com/boko4.jpg">Nigerian beauties</a> in their Sunday best, complete with elaborately folded headpieces made from Japanese <span style="font-style: italic;">washi</span> paper. Fantastic!<br /><br />I'll let you set the volume for <span style="font-style: italic;">Joy of Salvation</span>, all the while advising (slightly) louder is better as befits cheap electric guitars drenched in signal processing. And be sure to check Ebenezer's pedal steel player, his left wrist flexing like the tail of a moray eel. Our next installment, hopefully turning up sooner than did this one, lures <span style="font-style: italic;">NCIP</span> and its constituency to Morocco. Please stay tuned.<br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/128008311/JOY_OF_SALVIA.zip.html">JOY OF SALVATION (@ 160)</a><br /></span>(vinyl courtesy of Dan Meinwald, <a href="http://ear-usa.com/">E.A.R. USA</a>)count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-1127072043795159932005-09-18T12:21:00.000-07:002008-07-21T12:20:16.925-07:00Pablo Lubadika 'Porthos,' En Action<img style="width: 256px; height: 263px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3005/2690239008_88c2f2d5f7.jpg?v=0" alt="" onload="show_notes_initially();" class="reflect" /><br />No sooner was <a href="http://www.thewire.co.uk/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Wire</span></a> kind enough to spotlight this page as a good source both for African music and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Trivial Pursuits</span> data accruing thereto, than <span style="font-style: italic;">NCIP</span> took off for the Caribbean. This should not be taken as a measure of contrariness. Then again, were this so, I probably wouldn't admit it. In essence, my site follows the weather, with drinks, snacks and shoes to match in the best-case scenario.<br /><br />This week's entry marks a return to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soukous"><span style="font-style: italic;">soukous</span></a>, the up-and-at-'em dance music of Zaïre and the Congo covered in our initial posts. Latinate by inspiration, purely African in its inventiveness and zest, Congolese 'rumba rock' still sounds new with each play. Musician and arch horn-dog Pablo Lubadika Porthos was featured in <a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_permanentcondition_archive.html">an earlier entry</a> on the subject; today's offering, <span style="font-style: italic;">En Action</span>, is his magnum opus, the album for which he should best be remembered.<br /><br />Gary Stewart's history of Congolese music, the indispensable <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1859843689/qid=1127071584/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-3569992-3312164?v=glance&s=books"><span style="font-style: italic;">Rumba On The River</span></a>, follows the peregrinations of Pablo's career, tracing steps from his mid-'70s tenure as guitarist in Vicky Longomba's <span style="font-style: italic;">Lovy du Zaïre</span> and that group's next iteration, <span style="font-style: italic;">Orchestre Kara</span>; Syran M'Benza, future member of <a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_permanentcondition_archive.html">Les Quatre Étoiles</a>, was Pablo's bandmate during this era. Following his next bandleader, vocalist Sam Mangwana, young Pablo left a hardscrabble existence in Kinshasa behind for Lomé, Togo. Membership in <span style="font-style: italic;">the African All-Stars</span> was a significant entry in Pablo's curriculum vita; the band was together less than a year, but as Stewart describes its legacy, the All-Stars recorded eight albums' worth of music and determined the future course of soukous itself in the process.<br /><br />After recording the album <span style="font-style: italic;">Matilda</span> in Lagos, Nigeria with the African All-Stars, Pablo moved west to Abidjan in Côte d'Ivoire, in the company of Mangwana and a core group of former All-Stars. He then would migrate to Paris; there, while still playing with Mangwana's group, Pablo became part of a stable of Congolese expatriate musicians haunting local studios. His guitar was a key component on the best recordings by <a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_permanentcondition_archive.html">Pamelo Mounk'a</a>, as produced by Eddy Gustave. Pablo began devoting increasing amounts of time to his solo career. With producer Richard Dick at the helm, Pablo completed several extended dance tracks at Studio Laguna, some of which found their way onto Island Records' two-volume soukous anthology, <span style="font-style: italic;">Sound d'Afrique</span>.<br /><br />Pablo sussed out the advantages that Parisian studios offered circa 1980 and soon was overdubbing multiple guitar and bass parts himself. He was helped in no small measure during the solo sessions by Ignace Nkounkou, better known as Master Mwana Congo, a wizardly guitarist, maybe the Congolese conterpart to <span style="font-style: italic;">Teeny Hodges</span> from Al Green's band. Master's sparkling ostinati (as I've long ago concluded, the sound of a guitar telling itself a dirty joke) embellished recordings by Pamelo Mounk'a, Lea Lignazi and many others among the Kinshasa-in-Paris ex-pat set. Also on board were drummer Domingo Salsero and Priso 'en sax.' The four tracks recorded for <span style="font-style: italic;">En Action</span> were issued as two 12" singles by Island, but were never released as a consolidated album in the West. Gary Stewart offers the best description of that album:<br /><br />"Pablo's new work delivered the latest increment in the music's evolution, a ménage à trois of of old-school musicianship, the African All-Stars' faster paced new beat and the repetitive guitar phrasing of Kinshasa's youth bands. The music aimed below the waist, and it succeeded famously."<br /><br />Should anyone have had possible cause to doubt the latter ambition, Pablo's best solo album was adorned with what amounts to photography-as-mission statement. The women pictured in Pablo's company, incidentally, were styled by skilled hands from Parisian salon Coiffure Marceline, “Chic African Hair Dress,” at 56 rue des Poissoniers. Labor-intensive hair is much appreciated here at <span style="font-style: italic;">NCIP.</span> Not to put too fine a spin on the issue,<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>I'll exert my flair for the obvious by pointing out the visual evidence of Pablo's credentials as a hedonist <span style="font-style: italic;">non pareil</span>; his unassuming expression on the cover of <span style="font-style: italic;">En Action</span> more and less says it all. Monsieur Pablo, wherever you may be in the present moment — whether on earth or in the aether — rest assured that you've earned our respect.<br /><br />[Today's vinyl courtesy of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Conrad">Tony Conrad</a> collection.]<br /><br /><a href="http://rapidshare.de/files/5230017/PP_EA.zip.html"></a><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/13063710/LUBADIKACTION.zip.html">EN ACTION</a>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-1125978911780641902005-09-05T20:42:00.000-07:002010-05-19T14:28:20.768-07:00Pier' Rosier & Gazolinn', Gazolinn'<img style="width: 300px; height: 298px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3228/2808255196_5e1f1900e2.jpg?v=0" alt="GAZfrnt by you." title="" onload="show_notes_initially();" class="reflect" /><br /><br />Here's another gem first heard during one of <a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/2005/08/coup-clou-et-lensemble-select-sciss.html">the late '80s table tennis matches described in my last post</a>. <span style="font-style: italic;">Gazolinn'</span> represents the high-water mark of my fondness for <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zouk">zouk</a>, the Antillean dance music blending influences from Haiti (<a href="http://www.kwabs.com/haiti_compas.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">compas</span></a>), Europe and the folk traditions (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biguine"><span style="font-style: italic;">biguine</span></a> and <a href="http://www.mp3.com/cadence/genre/819/levelthree.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">cadence</span></a>) of Guadeloupe and Martinique, both islands in the Caribbean's Lesser Antilles archipelago. Indeed, today's entry, <span style="font-style: italic;">Gazolinn'</span>, is best described as the spawn of an assignation between Kraftwerk and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:eif5zfaheh8k">Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band</a> near a beach-side disco in Martinique.<br /><br />Zouk was another exotic music genre seemingly destined to take over the world in the '80s. Within the Francophone diaspora, you could say that it did just that for a time. <a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soukous">Soukous</a>, the brilliant dance music featured in <span style="font-style: italic;">NCIP</span>'s introductory posts, was nearly flattened outright by the one-two punch of MIDI sequencing and zouk. Though garnering huge audiences in Europe and Africa, zouk made next to no impact in the West, if possible even less than its immediate predecessors, Nigerian <span style="font-style: italic;">juju</span> and soukous from the Congo (via Paris). As the decade closed, zouk's non-impact became an inadvertent barometer of America's xenophobia, mounting then and intensifying through the present day.<br /><br />Pier' Rosier came to zouk from a grounding in <span style="font-style: italic;">chouval bwa</span>, the rhythm-weighted traditional form of Martinique, a music associated with carnival. In the early '80s, Rosier formed the band Gasoline and when that dissolved, owing to those oft-cited creative differences, he assembled Gazolinn'. This new iteration of his band turned then-new MIDI and sampling technologies to its own great advantage, with Rosier handling the lion's share of programming and arranging. As with <a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/2005/06/les-quatre-toiles-dance.html">Les Quatre Étoiles' recordings from the same period</a>, Gazolinn' struck a workable alliance between horn charts that jabbed and feigned, creole lyrics delivered by full ensemble chant or sultry cabaret purr atop computer-driven rhythms moving at full clip, augmented with busy hand percussion. I found myself enjoying instruments I usually loathed (electric piano at its lounge-iest, or the deadly squealing faux-roadhouse sax that must be Lorne Michaels' favorite instrument), further testament to the enduring greatness of Gazolinn'.<br /><br /><img style="width: 299px; height: 296px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3217/2807407835_8720efe329.jpg?v=0" alt="GAZbk by you." title="" onload="show_notes_initially();" class="reflect" /><br /><br />While not steeped in all things folkloric to the same extent as Jocelyne Beroard, zouk's greatest voice fronting the group <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll">Kassav'</a>, Gilda Ray's singing here is supple and versatile, the sound of <a href="http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/abreton.htm"><span style="font-style: italic;">l'amour fou</span></a> in any language. Her vocals provide an immediate prompt for comparison with Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, circa 1976 ("<span style="font-style: italic;">Cherchez La Femme</span>"), as her timbre reminded me then and now of the latter band's Cory Daye. Gilda Ray was easily the more musically sure-footed of the two; Cory Daye relied on acting ability and volume to disguise her somewhat <span style="font-style: italic;">impressionistic</span> relationship with intonation. To be altogether blunt, Ms. Daye often sounded as though she was most of the way in the bag. Anyone capable of sitting through a single play of Dr. Buzzard's regrettable late period effort, <span style="font-style: italic;">Calling All Beatniks</span> (its possible subtitle: <span style="font-style: italic;">All of the reverb, None of the band</span>), will know whereof I speak.<br /><br />The Shanachie label released <span style="font-style: italic;">Zouk Obsession</span> in 1990, a Pier' Rosier compilation including material from both periods of his career. How an anthology devoted to Gazolinn' could avoid interesting music is anyone's guess, but somehow Shanachie managed exactly that. After my first encounter with the Rosier sound in Original Music's barn, I scooped up as much of the band's original vinyl as I could grab at the time — including another self-titled release whose cover features a <span style="font-style: italic;">merde</span>-encrusted human peering from beneath a manhole cover and pointing a can of air freshener at the photographer. I soon learned that every Gazolinn' album contained at least a few songs, though often more, of comparable worth with the music you will hear today. None of these albums, to my ear, is quite on par with <span style="font-style: italic;">Gazolinn'</span>, saturated as it is with the good stuff stem to stern. Still, there's much to recommend in the group's discography, so it's all the more curious that neither Rosier nor Gazolinn' merit so much as a mention in the usually well-researched volumes comprising <span style="font-style: italic;">World Music: The Rough Guide</span>. It seems that a remedial Gazolinn' comp is in order, and so I will attempt same at some point in the foreseeable future.<br /><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/13067825/PETROL.zip.html"><br /></a><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/389316056/Gasoline.zip"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">GAZOLINN' (@ 320)</span></a>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-1124618538896855582005-08-21T02:20:00.000-07:002012-06-22T15:02:18.570-07:00Coupé Cloué et L'Ensemble Select, Sôciss<br />
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It seems that most new planets, especially those <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3511678.stm">recent add-ons</a> within our ever-expanding solar system, are discovered by more and less the same process. As I've been told, astronomers figure out where a planet ought to be and proceed to case the neighborhood with enhanced scrutiny. Often as not, these guys get lucky by informed means and something turns up.<br />
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By rights, then, it should have made sense that I'd gravitate to Haitian music. The western side of the island known as Hispaniola still holds the greatest concentration of African émigrés (that is a euphemism, folks) in the Caribbean. Also, Haiti occupies midddle ground, er, <span style="font-style: italic;">sea</span> between Puerto Rico, Jamaica and Cuba; records from each of the latter three convinced me that equatorial musicians are second to none, all the better if they've honed their craft in comparative isolation on some island. Then there are the fabulous corollary attractions of Haiti to consider: native brews, exotic combustibles, populous bat and insect colonies, <a href="http://www.rotten.com/library/religion/voudoun/">bizarre syncretic religions</a> (and <a href="http://www.who2.com/francoisduvalier.html">the oppressive dictatorships</a> that exploit same), <a href="http://death.monstrous.com/zombies.htm#voodoo">zombies</a> and so much more.<br />
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I'm opting not to snow all of you with an account of musical detective work in exotic climes that led me to Coupé Cloué. Instead, I will own up and reveal that I first heard Gesner Henry and his impossibly cool <a href="http://www.kwabs.com/haiti_compas.html">compas</a> band L'Ensemble Select in a barn in upstate New York, more than likely during a late '80s game of table tennis. The barn in question belonged to an English expatriate, <a href="http://worldviews.igc.org/awpguide/music.html">John Storm Roberts</a>. Though Roberts delighted in raising ducks and chickens on a Dutchess County farm, his principal concern was <a href="http://www.ne.jp/asahi/fbeat/africa/07-disco/07503.html">Original Music</a>, the first niche record company devoted to nurturing a then-nascent world music audience. A convincing case could be made for the fact that Roberts' first release on the label, the continent-spanning compilation <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000000NSP/102-1478056-0584936?v=glance"><span style="font-style: italic;">Africa Dances</span></a>, kick-started the whole <span style="font-style: italic;">worldbeat</span> issue. (Though as good a case could be made for <a href="http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/music/rbafrodi-90.php">Robert Christgau</a>'s favorable review that appeared in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Village Voice</span> a year or two after the album's release; to that point, circa '82, a great many copies of the record had been languishing in Roberts' closet).<br />
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Original Music grew through the '80s, both as a record label and a mail-order source of lp's and cassettes and, later, compact discs from faraway places with popular music of their own. That other countries made their own popular music, being music about cars and girls and fast money, music to do the horizontal mambo to — rather than the tuned rock- and log-beating that preoccupied most ethnomusical types to that point — wasn't news to Roberts. He'd been stationed throughout Africa as a UNESCO employee and had assiduously purchased the local top ten wherever he'd lived. Interest in indigenous pop was the focus of Roberts' writing (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/002864929X/qid=1124616985/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-1478056-0584936?v=glance&s=books"><span style="font-style: italic;">Black Music of Two Worlds</span></a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195121015/qid=1124617026/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-1478056-0584936?v=glance&s=books"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Latin Tinge</span></a>), his own field recordings (as issued by Nonesuch Explorer and Folkways labels) and definitely his Original Music imprint.<br />
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I moved upstate from Manhattan in 1985. Once settled, I made a point of seeking out Roberts' farm and soon enough found myself editing and remastering Original Music compilations in my studio. Many happy days were spent in the barn housing Original, a drafty, miserably cold affair in winter, so much more fun in the warmer seasons. Roberts set up a ping-pong table in the main room, the scene of endless matches between Original employees and visitors as the stereo blasted Congolese <span style="font-style: italic;">soukous</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">beguine</span> from Martinique, <span style="font-style: italic;">than ko</span> from Southeast Asia or old jazz sides by King Oliver. On a given summer day, the ping-pong ball's report bounced off the roof beams, pets of various species wandered through 'the office' and a record I'd only just heard would set a hook in my consciousness, usually in the same moment that a winning serve had cost me a point; happily, I recall Najma's Anglo-Indo hybrid <span style="font-style: italic;">Qareeb</span> as one of those mid-game revelations. <span style="font-style: italic;">Sôccis</span>, by Coupé Cloué et L'Ensemble Select, was another.<br />
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Here's what I actually know about Coupé Cloué, a.k.a. Gesner Henry: He was born in 1925 in Leogane, Haiti. He won renown first as a professional football star. Gesner's nickname, typical of his sly nature, was a multifold pun on both soccer skills and sexual prowess. His musical career lasted some forty years, beginning with Trio Crystal, later renamed Trio Select which then morphed into L'Ensemble Select by the early '70s. In that time, Coupé Cloué managed a brainy and sensuous meld of old-school <span style="font-style: italic;">twobadou</span> style (its guitar technique imported from Cuba by cane-cutters), island folk rhythms, Haitian méringue and jazz. He popularized electric guitar in Haiti's pop music. Singing in Francophone patois, from the beginning Henry evinced a knack for double entendre. (Though the cover photo and the title of today's album, <span style="font-style: italic;">Sôciss</span>, nearly qualifies as a single entendre, one about as subtle as a flying anvil.) And so, another reason to enjoy Coupé Cloué: Gesner Henry was wonderfully rude, as remains obvious to Haitians and honkies alike. Most of his songs featured extended monologues set to music, commentaries on life and love and sex, the human condition at a humid latitude; imagine <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balzac">Balzac</a> telling dirty jokes while leading an irresistable dance band. Gesner's own delivery alternated between song and speech much like that of his American counterpart, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:p998b5t4tsqh%7ET1">Andre Williams</a>, another transcendental hedonist.<br />
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The guitar interplay within L'Ensemble Select much resembles that heard in Congolese rumba-rock or <span style="font-style: italic;">soukous</span>, the stuff of my initial (and future) <span style="font-style: italic;">NCIP</span> posts. Gesner Henry always claimed that he had not heard soukous prior to visiting the Congo in 1975. Not surprisingly, Henry & Co. were <span style="font-style: italic;">très populaire</span> in Africa and remained so at home. Indeed, Coupé Cloué may have been too popular for their own good in Haiti, as they were often asked to perform at parties held by the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonton_Macoute">Tonton Macoutes</a>, the dreaded secret police force maintained by dictator <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Doc_Duvalier">Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier</a>. Gesner Henry was sensitive to criticism of these gigs, deflecting charges that he supported a corrupt regime by pointing out that an invitation from the Tonton Macoutes was one that you couldn't refuse.<br />
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Gesner Henry died at age seventy-three in 1998, about four weeks after his final performance. Like <a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/2005_06_01_permanentcondition_archive.html">Pamelo Mounk'a</a>, Henry was a victim of diabetes. It saddens me, that there won't be any more records by Coupé Cloué; I wish there were more like him. Other Haitian bands like Boukman Eksperyans and Tabou Combo and RAM more recently have made inroads with international audiences; while they're each one fine in their own right, they all seem more than a bit polite. None possess the rootsy, lo-fi raunch of Gesner and his ensemble of horn-dogs. Someone once described Neil Young's Crazy Horse as being the antithesis of slick, looking like a band made up of car thieves. To judge by the picaresque verve evident in every note of their music, Coupé Cloué et L'Ensemble Select <span style="font-style: italic;">played</span> like a band of car thieves.<br />
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<a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?f3q73wvbq347nlh">SOCISS</a><a href="http://rapidshare.de/files/4221462/Sausage_Repost_Seite_2.zip.html"></a>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-1123902227670928402005-08-12T18:50:00.000-07:002008-08-10T22:20:36.281-07:00Prince Jazzbo, Natty Passing Thru' / Ital Corner<img style="width: 280px; height: 275px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3106/2751827715_fda630bd3a.jpg?v=0" alt="IMG_0287 by you." title="" onload="show_notes_initially();" class="reflect" /><br /><br />Each iteration of this journal has found me striving to preach both to the choir and beyond, by hopefully inviting means. Some years ago, <a href="http://www.etsmtl.ca/pers/jboisono/shawnphillips/friends/paul.htm">Paul Buckmaster</a> (composer of the <span style="font-style: italic;">12 Monkeys</span> film score and string arranger for the Rolling Stones' <span style="font-style: italic;">Sticky Fingers</span> lp…and for Elton John, too, but we'll forgive him) chastised me gently, as he is a good egg, for assuming too much of my readership's knowledge. He felt that my writing should be more instructive for those new to the subject at hand. I agreed with Mr. Buckmaster, then and now.<br /><br />Of course, that doesn't make introducing this week's entry any easier, as our featured album represents a number of entwined threads:<br /><br />• Jamaica's DJ culture of the '70s, which in turn spawned hip-hop and rap and the debatable 'science' of remixing<br />• that most prolific record producer, <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/artist/40">Lee "Scratch" Perry</a>, an inventive runt whose mixes are recognizable from note one and whose significance in the history of popular music is unimpeachable<br />• the embrace of weirdness for its own sake as an esthetic strategy, utilized — perhaps unconsciously — by artist and producer alike, often to self-immolating extremes (literally, in Perry's case, as he ended the chapter of his greatest creativity by <a href="http://www.davidjudah.ca/photos_jamaica99.php?slide=6">torching</a> <a href="http://www.irationsteppas.ch/Bilder/BLACK_ARK_STUDIO.JPG">his own studio</a>)<br />• the admixture of music, humor, millennial cult religion, paranoia and drugs<br /><br />What say, we just take the last three for granted? It would make my life so much easier. OK, anyone unfamiliar with <a href="http://www.deepspacenyc.com/albums/album03/lee_perry.thumb.jpg">Lee Perry and the musical output of his backyard studio</a>, a blaze of hard work and bizarre inspiration lasting three or maybe four years (depending on the strength of your affection), is directed to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0862418542/qid=1123899688/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-4409480-1327204?v=glance&s=books">David Katz's biography</a> and the Scratch-themed back number of the Beastie Boys' magazine <span style="font-style: italic;">Grand Royal</span>. Those acquainted with the quixotic, ultra-distinctive and probably pathological career paths of record producers <a href="http://handelonthelaw.com/content_images/full/news/200517_philspector.jpg">Phil Spector</a>, Brian Wilson, Joe Meek and Todd Rundgren should have no trouble mapping Thread #3 onto today's topic. And as I'm certain you've all taken drugs and laughed achingly at nothing in particular while music was playing and then wondered why, perhaps hoping that membership in the <a href="http://www.subgenius.com/">Church of the Subgenius</a> might solve your existential dilemma...well, I think that takes care of Thread #4. Are we happy thus far, Mr. Buckmaster?<br /><br />It would be easy to dismiss <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/artist/67">Prince Jazzbo</a> as an also-ran in reggae, a DJ who validated trends rather than instigating them. Consider the pantheon* of Jamaican DJ's:<br /><br />• <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/artist/38">U-Roy</a>, the first true star of 'talkover,' shrieking and cackling nursery rhymes and ass-backward limericks over instrumental mixes of hit songs;<br />• <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/artist/83">I-Roy</a>, his toasting glacially cool, wicked and literate, fast as lightning, a consummate wise-ass with a gift for extemporaneous lyrics comparable only to Lou Reed;<br />• <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/artist/4">Big Youth</a>, spearheading the second wave of DJ's during the 'cultural' era, the perfect blend of good humor, Rasta dread, fascinating orthodonture and the manic presence of a late night horror movie host, crazy about motorcycles, Marcus Garvey, John Coltrane and herb;<br />• <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/artist/156">Prince Far-I</a>, the sub-glottal rumble of his voice probably registering on the Richter scale above that of Barry White, filled with righteous indignation (Inspirational quote: "I grieve for this generation"), the lone source of information whom I'd believe, were the world about to end.<br /><br /><img style="width: 278px; height: 281px;" src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3193/2752661238_67aeb4c0af.jpg?v=0" alt="IMG_0288 by you." title="" onload="show_notes_initially();" class="reflect" /><br /><br />Jazzbo shared qualities with each of these characters, though to my ear he never came across as an originator. For many reggae fans, he was the guy who lost a cutting contest with I-Roy. As documented in David Katz's indispensable oral history of reggae, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1582341435/qid=1123899649/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-4409480-1327204"><span style="font-style: italic;">Solid Foundation</span></a> (Bloomsbury, 2003), the war of words between Prince Jazzbo and I-Roy was a marketing gimmick instigated by the manager of Monica's, the Toronto hairdressing shop that became a serious reggae emporium in the '70s, as mentioned in my <a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/2005/07/errol-brown-sky-nations-band-medley.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Medley Dub</span></a> entry.<br /><br />It all began cute, but sure as my mom or <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105236/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnxteD0yMHxsbT01MDB8dHQ9MXxmYj11fHBuPTB8cT1yZXNlcnZvaXIgZG9nc3xodG1sPTF8bm09MQ__;fc=1;ft=7;fm=1">Michael Madsen's Mr. Blonde</a> will tell you, the kids play rough and somebody — in this case, Prince Jazzbo — gonna end up crying. His "Straight to I-Roy's Head" single charged that I-Roy was a mere U-Roy imitator, a barb too polite by half. Jazzbo was a ghetto kid, unschooled and fundamentally kind. I-Roy was anything but, as he proceeded to rip several new orifices in the carcass of Jazzbo's career with the demented relish of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergio_Leone">Sergio Leone</a> villain. I-Roy's intimation that Prince J was gay was but one among many of the former's rapid-fire ripostes, each more lethal than the last. This was about as bad as it could get in Jamaica, an island whose males suffer a paralyzing fear of homosexuals and the menstrual cycle (to the latter, <span style="font-style: italic;">blood clot</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">bumba clot</span>, etc. as the last words in deprecation, not to mention grounds for justifiable homicide). Jazzbo couldn't compete, ultimately, and threw in the towel. Incidentally, the 45's documenting Jazzbo's and I-Roy's feud were collated on an lp, <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/release/1091"><span style="font-style: italic;">Step Forward Youth</span></a>, which I have yet to find, this collection distinct from the entirely weak conciliatory duet CD they released over a decade later.<br /><br />We will never know Prince Jazzbo's true place in the greater scheme, had his recorded debut (<a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/release/347"><span style="font-style: italic;">Choice of Version</span></a>) appeared as scheduled in the early '70s; producer Coxsone Dodd delayed its release by a couple of decades and more. As such, the album known variously as <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/release/559"><span style="font-style: italic;">Natty Passing Thru'</span></a> (for its initial release on the Black Wax label in Jamaica) or <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/release/559#rel456"><span style="font-style: italic;">Ital Corner</span></a> (when later issued in the U.S. by Brad Osbourne's Clocktower imprint) represents Prince Jazzbo's moment in the sun. It was tracked in its entirety early in 1974 at producer Lee "Scratch" Perry's <a href="http://www.davidjudah.ca/photos_jamaica99.php?slide=5">newly opened four-track studio</a>, the <a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.deepspacenyc.com/albums/album03/rxp20leesdetail.thumb.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.deepspacenyc.com/modules.php%3Fset_albumName%3Dalbum03%26op%3Dmodload%26name%3DPhoto_Gallery%26file%3Dindex%26include%3Dview_album.php&amp;h=150&w=109&sz=9&tbnid=ByYbhDr3j2kJ:&amp;tbnh=90&tbnw=65&hl=en&start=11&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dblack%2Bark%2Bstudio%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DG">Black Ark</a>, a <a href="http://fusionanomaly.net/leescratchperryblackarkburn.jpg">garage-sized structure in Perry's backyard</a>, with Perry's house band as rhythm section.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.azevedo.ca/scratch/images/upsetters_1978.jpg">The Upsetters</a> were Scratch's answer to the Meters, whose New Orleans funk was plagiarized often and effectively on early <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/artist/482">Upsetters</a> instrumentals. Most of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ital Corner</span>'s tracks were cut for Jazzbo's use, according to David Katz's exhaustively researched <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0862418542/qid=1123899688/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-4409480-1327204?v=glance&s=books"><span style="font-style: italic;">People Funny Boy: the Genius of Lee "Scratch" Perry</span></a> (Payback Press, 2000). Some rhythms, though, will prove immediately familiar, the accompaniment of Max Romeo's "One Step Forward" recycled as the basis of Jazzbo's "Ital Corner." The sound is pure <a href="http://www.jahtari.org/magazine/reggae-history/images/Black-ArkOn.gif">Scratch</a>, reggae-as-moiré-pattern, the entire band and vocalist pushed through phase shifters and excessive spring reverb. The other Black Ark productions released on Island Records had the benefit of English mastering engineers. <span style="font-style: italic;">Ital Corner</span> is rougher around the edges, dark as India ink and enhanced with portents of doom. We hear the DJ at the bottom of a very deep pit, en route to Hell; the horn section squalls like insects over a distant hill at dusk.<br /><br />Throughout, Prince Jazzbo plays the sufferer, enumerating the difficulties of a Rastafarian marooned several area codes distant from his true Ethiopian home. Jazzbo's raps document his struggles through the veil of tears known as <span style="font-style: italic;">Babylon</span> or <a href="http://www.jamaicans.com/">Jamaica</a>, as <a href="http://www.golocaljamaica.com/photogallery/st.%20mary/passing%20through/pages/Firefly-Noel%20Coward%20statue.htm">Noel Coward</a> and <a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.vegards007.com/Fakta/Goldeneye3.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.vegards007.com/Fakta/Goldeneye.php&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;h=146&w=247&sz=11&tbnid=YNoeUPRbgYwJ:&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;tbnh=62&tbnw=105&hl=en&start=21&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dian%2Bfleming%2Bjamaica%26start%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN">Ian Fleming</a> might have recognized it. Our Prince bad-raps the Pope and rails against the breadheads with vehemence that would do <a href="http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/8889/yo.htm">Neil</a> of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/y/youngonesthe_1299003473.shtml"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Young Ones</span></a> proud. All told, Jazzbo summons feelings of wrath and paranoia and vengeance that, combined with the fog of herb, create an ambience that is very dread indeed. And, from time to time, a tad dyslexic, as typified by Scratch's decision to let an episode of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Rhoda</span> TV sitcom play into the mix of "Blood Dunza." (Myself, I'll take the Pope over Valerie Harper, but to each man his own image of iniquity.) An outtake from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Ital Corner</span> sessions, "Croaking Lizard," appeared a few months later as part of the Upsetters' <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/release/298"><span style="font-style: italic;">Super Ape</span></a>, a rococo masterpiece still available on aluminum, the <span style="font-style: italic;">Sgt. Pepper's…</span> of reggae, deconstructed and over-embroidered all at once. Differing from other <span style="font-style: italic;">NCIP</span> entries to date, <span style="font-style: italic;">Ital Corner</span> has been issued on CD, though obviously ripped from a vinyl pressing and not so well at that. I hope today's entry is an improvement.<br /><br />It has been mooted that the more tightly wound rhythms of rock steady unspooled into the slower tempo of reggae in response to very loaded types dancing outdoors in the depths of an especially muggy Jamaican summer. I'd venture that now's the perfect time to reenact history. It's Friday, for Jah's sake. <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/faith/images/rastafarian2_150.jpg">Torch one</a>, people! <span style="font-style: italic;">Check it! Seen? As I would really, really tell ya!</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/13109952/ORGANICANGLE.zip.html">ITAL CORNER</a><br /></span><a href="http://rapidshare.de/files/3897100/Organic_Intersection.zip.html"></a><br />* Well, <span style="font-style: italic;">my</span> pantheon, anyway. Make your own if you don't like it.count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13403681.post-1123231599219881562005-08-05T01:32:00.000-07:002007-01-24T00:57:59.934-08:00Prince Jammy, Jammy's In Lion Dub Style<img src="http://photos22.flickr.com/31397931_793edd0572.jpg?v=0" alt="" onload="show_notes_initially()" height="107" width="217" /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dub_music">Dub</a>, in all its shadowy refulgence, offers pleasure on par with few other items in my life. Its pleasures are rivalled only by the sight of pale, overly-mascara’ed, zaftig girls spilling out of black corsetry at Goth clubs or, more likely, the cloudy afternoon that finds me curled up with a <a href="http://pshaw.net/N/addams_books.html">favorite anthology</a> of <a href="http://www.toonopedia.com/addams.htm">Charles Addams</a> cartoons. There is more than faint redolence of the macabre, enjoyably so, in the murky dream logic of reggae deconstructed in dub. Fitting, then, that the caption of a particular Addams cartoon sums for me the joy of immersion in a great dub album: Addams's drawing shows the couple whom we now know as Gomez and Morticia (thanks to <a href="http://www.morticiasmorgue.com/addams.html">the ABC sitcom</a>, as they were never named in the pages of <span style="font-style: italic;">The New Yorker</span>) standing in the doorway of their decayed Victorian pile, waving good night to a pair of mutants shambling down the front walk. Gomez remarks, “I like them. They <span style="font-style: italic;">wear</span> well.”<br /><br />As much can be said, and more (as you knew I would) of <span style="font-style: italic;">Jammy’s In Lion Dub Style</span>. Though it appeared circa ’77, in the fading years of dub’s halcyon era, this set is a standard bearer for the form, with its many strengths linked to <a href="http://permanentcondition.blogspot.com/2005/07/errol-brown-sky-nations-band-medley.html">the first great collections of ‘version’ sides appearing earlier in the decade</a>. <span style="font-style: italic;">Jammy's...</span> was mixed at the studio of dub potentate <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/profiles/kingtubby.shtml">King Tubby</a>, by his then-assistant Prince Jammy (neé Lloyd James). Most of the tracks versioned herein were drawn from Black Uhuru’s debut album for Jammy’s label, reissued by Greensleeves in the U.K., the set known variously as <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/release/732"><span style="font-style: italic;">Black Sounds of Freedom</span></a> or <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/release/1685"><span style="font-style: italic;">Love Crisis</span></a>. That group’s vocal talent was mostly absent from <span style="font-style: italic;">Jammy’s In Lion Dub Style</span>, as the mixer of the title was concerned with hammering out his own signature mixes and escaping the shadow, still lengthening through the present day, of his employer. The space-delineating reverb, a Fisher unit rewired by King Tubby, added a dimension perhaps best appreciated by spelunkers. Though there was more than enough bass, the first priority of any self-respecting dub organizer, Jammy used <span style="font-style: italic;">filter sweeping</span> to create slow-motion melodies, anticipating Kraftwerk’s activities in this area by a full decade or more. The album that emerged was dark, very dark, deceptively plain-spun as a Double Dutch rhyme and every bit as insidious.<br /><br />Prince Jammy issued this lp in close proximity to two other essential dub albums he created, Horace Andy’s <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/release/3316"><span style="font-style: italic;">In The Light Dub</span></a> (reissued on CD in combination with its parent album of songs, on the Blood & Fire imprint) and Gregory Isaacs’ <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/release/2194"><span style="font-style: italic;">Slum In Dub</span></a>. <span style="font-style: italic;">Jammy’s In Lion Dub Style</span> has never seen release on aluminum, possibly owing to what Steve Barrow (A&R director for archival imprint <a href="http://www.bloodandfire.co.uk/">Blood & Fire</a>, he's also the music’s greatest historian, the <a href="http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v10/v10p509_Konkin.html">A.J.P. Taylor</a> of reggae) described as ‘ineradicable groove swish.’ This artifact is occasionally audible and may speak to an attribute of <a href="http://www.davidjudah.ca/photos_jamaica99.php">the studio then frequented by Prince Jamm</a><a href="http://www.davidjudah.ca/photos_jamaica99.php">y</a>. To describe many of the dubs being <span style="font-style: italic;">cut</span> in King Tubby’s studio is to speak literally; often as not, the mixes went straight to a disc-cutting lathe, bypassing the usual intermediary master tape. This technique is still employed by audiophile labels; it certainly abetted the cavernous sound stage and stygian bass unique to Tubby’s mixing room.<br /><br />Of course, an enduring tenet of dub is that the weirdest, most inventive mix can’t save a duff performance. <span style="font-style: italic;">Jammy’s In Lion Dub Style</span> drew upon sessions featuring a stellar array of Jamaican studio talent: Robbie Shakespear on bass, drumming by Sly Dunbar or Carlton ‘Santa’ Davis, keyboards by Keith Sterling and Winston Wright (both from the later edition of Lee Perry’s studio band, the Upsetters) and the largely unsung MVP of reggae, <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/artist/196">guitarist Earl ‘Chinna’ Smith</a>.<br /><br />I was saddened, as many others were, to see 'cultural' rhythms of the '70s segue into ‘80s dancehall. The ostensible symptoms of change seem linked. The figurative death of songwriting in reggae. The too-literal death of many legendary talents (Marley, Tosh, Prince Far I, Hugh Mundell, <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/release/395">Michael Smith</a> — the latter <span style="font-style: italic;">stoned to death</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">by a mob</span> in the 20th Century — and King Tubby himself), others emigrating from the world's loudest island. Dancehall’s serving as soundtrack for the test-marketing of crack in Jamaica, before that substance became the mid-'80s agent of cultural corrosion <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1576872130/qid=1123257977/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/103-8219774-2395057?v=glance&s=books">elsewhere</a>. Prince Jammy matriculated to King Jammy as this new era dawned and made his greatest mark as a dancehall producer. I will always favor the earlier years, though, when he helmed fabulous dubs such as those heard today.<br /><br /><a href="http://flickr.com/photos/46502565@N00/31397932/"><img src="http://photos22.flickr.com/31397932_15852891c4_m.jpg" height="108" width="216" /></a><br />As <span style="font-style: italic;">Jammy’s In Lion Dub Style</span> is a comparatively brief collection, I have added a rarity found only on a 12” vinyl single, to the best of my knowledge. The A-side is a song by the Congos, “Jah Is The Sweetest.” (By the way, since I've mentioned Black Uhuru already in this post, don’t you think it’s interesting how reggae artists obsess about Haile Selassie-as-godhead, until their royalty cheques improve? Excepting <a href="http://www.burningspear.net/">Burning Spear</a>, of course.) The B-side, included in today’s listening, is “Reggae Strings,” credited to Derrik (sic) Holtsma and Sly & Robbie. The intro of this instrumental finds the treble muted, <span style="font-style: italic;">under heavy manners</span>. Another wild filter sweep, the high end opens up and lead violins (!) appear in duet; a bit <span style="font-style: italic;">Alice In Wonderland</span>, this. I don’t know of any other reggae tracks that employ strings so effectively, save for those comprising the four volumes of <a href="http://www.roots-archives.com/release/2369"><span style="font-style: italic;">Harry Mudie Meets King Tubby In Dub Conference</span></a>. (Jamaicans were way in front — by years — of author Alexander McCall Smith in the baroque titling sweepstakes.) “Reggae Strings” resembles a soundtrack cue from two decades later, composer Angelo Badalamenti’s “Alvin’s Theme,” the splendid musical centerpiece of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Straight Story</span>. That film was directed by David Lynch, something of an Addams character in his own right.<br /><br />Next up, our trio of Jamaican posts concludes with the one mid-‘70s album from <a href="http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y82/clem-b/ark.jpg">Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Black Ark studio</a> that still is not properly represented on CD. Please stay tuned...<a href="http://www.morticiasmorgue.com/af/3.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Querida</span></a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/13128517/LEONINE_VERSION.zip.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">JAMMY'S IN LION DUB STYLE</span></a><br /><br /><a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/13129568/Reggae_Strings.m4a.zip.html">REGGAE STRINGS</a>count reeshardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15006191700296094116noreply@blogger.com6